A radical movement of young Israeli women is abandoning civilian life and education to live in rudimentary hilltop tents across the occupied West Bank.
Dubbed the 'Hilltop Girls', this group champions a strategy of 'soft settlement', replacing weapons and military patrols with seemingly mundane daily activities.
By portraying their presence as a natural, family-oriented social project, they aim to legitimise the gradual seizure of private Palestinian land and the establishment of new outposts.
These women are an extension of the Hilltop Youth, a radical religious Zionist group that emerged in 1998 when Ariel Sharon urged settler youths to seize West Bank hilltops. They embrace an ideology geared towards establishing a 'Greater Israel' extending beyond historic Palestine.
To normalise their presence, the Hilltop Girls heavily rely on social media, publishing promotional videos that avoid the violent imagery associated with other settlers. They claim they merely cook and hang laundry, but their end goals are similar – to establish the so-called Promised Land.
The Maoz Esther and Or Ahuvia outposts, located northeast of Ramallah, serve as prime examples of this systematic expansion. By 2025, Maoz Esther housed 17 families and more than 50 children, exceeding the size of the neighbouring Kochav HaShahar settlement.
While Israeli police occasionally dismantle these outposts on camera, rights activists describe these operations as a coordinated theatrical display. According to B'Tselem, most outposts enjoy direct state support, with women immediately rebuilding structures as soon as police depart.
The government provides nearly $40m in food and clothing subsidies to Hilltop Youth members. In early 2025, the Knesset advanced a bill to allow Jews to purchase land in the West Bank freely, ensuring these acquisitions remain protected even in the event of future political agreements.
Politicians like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir actively support these outposts, while Defence Minister Israel Katz recently boasted: 'I cancelled, on my own initiative, all administrative orders against settlers in the West Bank.'
The human toll is devastating. Between January 2025 and May 2026, the UN recorded at least 2,806 settler attacks, averaging five incidents a day. In 2026 alone, systematic settler pogroms displaced nearly 2,000 Palestinians, undermining the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
Source: www.aljazeera.com