JERUSALEM -- The population of Jewish settlements in the West Bank surged by more than 3% in 2019, well above the growth rate of Israel's overall population, a settler group said Tuesday.
The data, which was released ahead of President Donald Trump's long-awaited peace plan, indicates that evacuating settlements is no longer a viable option for international peacemakers, said Baruch Gordon, director of West Bank Jewish Population Stats.
"We're here, and we're not going anywhere," he said.
His group, using official Interior Ministry data, said the population of West Bank settlements rose to 463,353 people as of Jan. 1, up 3.1% from 449,508 a year earlier. In comparison, Israel's overall population rose 1.9% last year to 9,136,000 people, according to official data.
The figures do not include an estimated 300,000 Jewish Israelis living in settlements in annexed east Jerusalem.
The Palestinians seek the West Bank and east Jerusalem -- areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war -- as parts of an independent Palestinian state.
"All settlements are illegal, and the settler presence on Palestinian land is illegal," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "This is a result of Israeli government policies."
Israel annexed east Jerusalem and considers the entire city to be its capital. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to annex large chunks of the West Bank after Trump's peace plan was released Tuesday.
The international community considers both territories to be occupied and all settlements to be illegal.
But the Trump administration, in a break from its predecessors and the rest of the world, has taken a much friendlier approach and in November declared it does not consider settlements illegal.
One of the architects of the peace proposal, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, is a former president of Bet El Institutions, which sponsored the report released Tuesday. U.S. support for the settlements in the peace proposal gives Israel the cover it needs to proceed with annexation plans.
According to the report, the growth rate of the settlement population last year actually dipped slightly from the 3.3% figure recorded in 2018. But it still remained well ahead of the general population.
The growth is driven in part by the relatively affordable housing prices found in the settlements, as well as the higher birthrate among their many religious families.
A Section on 01/29/2020