Haredi Settlers: The Non-Zionist Jewish Settlers of the West Bank

Abstract

The project to create a modern Jewish nation on Palestinian land provoked fierce opposition not only from Palestinians but also from Jewish groups that rejected or did not ‘ft’ into it — in particular the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews. The latter’s opposition is less debated in contemporary literature; yet, this history underlines the impossibility of forming a homogenous state as envisaged by the Zionist movement. One paradoxical aspect of the transforming Israeli colonizing project is that since the end of the 1980s, Haredi groups have been establishing their own settler-cities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and are the fastest-growing settler group today, despite being theologically and culturally opposed to the Zionist project. The very groups that destabilize the project of a modern Jewish state from within are now at the heart of the most disputed political issue today — the West Bank settlements. Definitions of a single people, sovereignty, and territory remain unstable in Israel.