One in 10 American migrants to Israel goes to a settlement

American migrants are less than 3% cent of Israel’s population, but they are much bigger proportion of those choosing to live in the West Bank.

American immigrants moved to West Bank settlements at a rate three times higher than the average for all new arrivals in 2021, according to new figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics this week.

Roughly one in 10 people who moved to Israel from the United States — 333 out of 3480 — made their first home in the West Bank. This compared to the 2.6 % who did the same from France, 1.7% from Russia and 1.6% from Ukraine.

On average, 3.2% of all new immigrants, including Americans, move to settlements upon arriving in the country.

The 333 American immigrants who moved to settlements represent a major increase in real numbers over previous years; in 2020, fewer than 200 American immigrants moved to settlements. But that is due to an overall rise in immigration to Israel from the US in 2021, not a change in the overall trend.

Last year was a banner year for immigration to Israel from the US, with some 4000 people making the move, the highest number since 1973, according to the Immigration and Absorption Ministry. This was, in part, due to a backlog created the year before because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

In her book, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement, Sarah Hirschhorn, associate professor of Israel studies at Northwestern University, estimates that American citizens represent 15% of the overall settlement population, a significantly disproportionate figure, based on a variety of data sources. Less than 200,000 US citizens are estimated to live in Israel, or roughly 2.2% of the total Israeli population.

Hirschhorn attributes this inflated presence of American Jews in the West Bank to a combination of ideology and the natural draw of the settlements to English-speaking religious immigrants.