Hilltop youth

Hilltop Youth (Hebrew: נוער הגבעות‎‎, No'ar HaGva'ot) is a term commonly used to refer to hard-line, religious-nationalist youth who establish outposts without an Israeli legal basis in the West Bank. They have been compared to a Jewish form of ISIS. In their view, Palestinians are "raping the Holy Land", and must be expelled. According to Ami Pedahzur, their work in establishing illegal outposts was not simply the result of individual initiatives, this was "a myth cultivated by the Yesha Council", and, in fact, forms part of a wider multi-faceted settler strategy. The term "hilltop youth" is regarded by Daniel Byman as a misnomer, since the movement was founded mostly by married people in their mid-twenties.

On 16 November 1998, in what was viewed as a declaration intended to thwart peace talks, and in particular the implementation of his political rival Benjamin Netanyahu's Wye River agreement with the Palestinian National Authority, the then Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon urged settler youth to "grab the hilltops", adding,

"Everyone that's there should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand the territory. Everything that's grabbed will be in our hands. Everything we don't grab will be in their hands."

People proceeded to heed his exhortation and outposts proliferated, in a practice often called "creating facts on the ground", but many would later feel betrayed by Sharon when the Israeli West Bank barrier he devised in 2005 cut off many of the illegal communities from the expanded Israel Sharon envisaged at that time.

The example of figures like Netanel Ozeri, who moved his family out of the safety of Kiryat Arba's perimeters to build an outpost, Hilltop 26, on nearby Palestinian land, was also important: Ozeri was later shot dead by Palestinian gunmen.

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