"We should launch a nuclear bomb, we must continue the fight against Hamas and do the same as  the U.S. made with Japan in the Second World War "

Avigdor Lieberman,
Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, leader of the Israeli political party, Yisrael Beitenu

There are approximately 500,000 Jewish settlers in over 200 illegal settlements, 300,000 of them are in West Bank and the rest is in Jerusalem. International law says that all the settlements violate Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits the annexation of land by the use of force, a principle reaffirmed in the Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter .

The settler population, including East Jerusalem's Jewish population has grown up at a rate of 5% or more during the past 20 years, almost four times the Israeli population as a whole.

The Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying Power from transferring its civilian population into the territory they occupied. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court considers it a war crime. For its part, the International Court of Justice on 9 July 2004, considered that "the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and economic and social development."

The settlements are built in strategic locations, usually at the top of the mountain, to achieve the greatest possible territorial control. Currently have the factual control over 60% of the entire West Bank.

The Resolutions 452 and 465, the Security Council of the UN, urge Israel to "dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to put an urgent end to the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.