Image copyright Reuters Image caption Kiryat Arba (above) is certainly one of approximately A HUNDRED AND FORTY settlements within the occupied West Bank
The Issue of settlements is one of the most contentious areas of dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.
Can settlement issue be solved?
greater than 600,000 Jews are living in about ONE HUNDRED FORTY settlements constructed considering Israel’s career of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights within the 1967 Middle East war.
The Palestinians see them as an immense crisis to peace and a barrier to a hoped-for Palestinian state on land which they occupy.
Israel says such a controversy is a pretext for avoiding direct peace talks, and that the fate of settlements must be negotiated according with peace accords signed with the Palestinians in 1993.