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Star Settlements

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The 7 Stars Plan | Map of Settlements

The Star Settlements (יישובי הכוכבים), also known as The Seven Stars Plan,[1] are a controversial series of settlements that were established in Israel during the 1990s along the Green Line. Initially the program was to include the creation of seven new settlement projects, but would eventually see the construction of nine prior to the merging of several of these municipalities, changing the shape of the overall plan but not taking away from its original intended purpose. These settlements would eventually come to include communities of various sizes, and rural as well as suburban configurations. The original location of this project was set to be on the border of the Green Line, near central Israel and the Sharon plain.

History

The Seven Star Plan

Then-Minister of Construction and Housing (משרד הבינוי והשיכון), Ariel Sharon, initially opposed the program because of concerns around inviting too much concrete into the pristine coastal plains- preferring instead to keep building Mitzpim in the Galilee[2] and in the Negev.

Sharon, who had experience with construction as well as in the creation of outposts and settlements believed that over-construction was taking place in central Israel, and he viewed the dense concentration of new development projects in the center posed a security risk to a population who were vulnerable to missiles as well as from the harms that their concentration caused to local agricultural lands and water sources.[3] Context for the project includes the earlier initiatives of the 1967 Allon Plan[4] and 1977 Sharon Plan.[5]

Despite starting off in opposition to this settlement plan, after Ariel Sharon had taken office as Minister of Construction and Housing in July 1990, he adopted and began to undertake the necessary steps to kickstart and promote the project.[6] At tlaunch, then Director-General of the Ministry of Housing, Aryeh Bar, explained that the purpose of the program was to provide housing quickly, due to the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, and to meet the demand of young couples to live in single-family homes in central Israel. However, Member of Knesset Michael Eitan from Likud, one of the program’s initiators, explained that the intention was to connect the settlements in "western Samaria to the Star Settlements" which would create a territorial continuum on both sides of the Green Line, and that “building along the ridge axis creates an immediate connection between the settlers on the line and Samaria, erases the Green Line, and prevents progress toward a territorial compromise with the Palestinians”.[7]

Establishment

In December 1990, the Israeli Cabinet Committee for Immigration and Absorption approved a large-scale initiative presented by the Ministry of Construction and Housing, commonly referred to as the “Seven Stars Plan” (תוכנית שבעת הכוכבים). The plan emerged in the context of the large immigration wave from the former Soviet Union and was designed to provide housing while simultaneously advancing territorial development along the Green Line. Proposed under Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, the plan envisioned a continuous belt of new Jewish towns stretching from Modi’in in the south to Mei Ami in Wadi ‘Ara in the north, largely aligned with the route of the future Trans-Israel Highway (Highway 6), which at the time was still in the planning stages.[8]

The planning concept focused on establishing a “ridge axis” communities and settlements corridor linking suburban-communal towns along the western edge of the West Bank. The project was intended both to absorb population growth and to strengthen Jewish demographic presence in the area known as the “Little Triangle,”[9] a region with a high concentration of Arab-Israeli towns near the Green Line. According to contemporary planning documents and later analyses, the plan envisioned a chain of settlements and development towns linked by transportation and industrial infrastructure,[10] including approximately 14 industrial zones and a north–south highway connecting the new communities.

  • Overall, the plan at that time encompassed the construction of 28,000 housing units, detailed as follows:[11][12]
    • Givat HaBracha (in the Mei Ami area of Wadi ‘Ara) – 2,000 units;
    • Katzir A – 1,300 units;
    • Harish A – 6,000 units;
    • Yad Hana A – 1,400 units; became Bat Hefer.
    • Geulim A – 1,600 units;
    • Eyal A South – 2,300 units;
    • Tzur Natan A South – 1,100 units;
    • Mazor A – 6,500 units;
    • Shoham – 3,000 units;
    • Kfar Ruth A – 700 units;
    • and expansion of the existing settlement Sha’ar Ephraim.[13]

The planning basis for the project was further elaborated in 1991 in the “Ridge Axis Plan” (תוכנית ציר הרכס), prepared by a planning team headed by regional planner Nahum Donsky for the Ministry of Construction and Housing. This planning document proposed the establishment of twelve new settlements together with the expansion of several existing ones, forming a continuous chain of suburban communities along the Green Line corridor.[14] The strategy integrated residential development with transportation infrastructure, particularly the future Trans-Israel Highway, which was intended to serve as the central spine connecting the new settlements to Israel’s coastal metropolitan region.[15]

References

  1. ↑ "ISRAELI SETTLEMENT MASTER PLANS, 1976-1991". PASSIA. Retrieved 2026-03-07.
  2. ↑ "הטקסט בתמונה הוא: שרון: תימשך הקמת המיצפים בגליל". Davar. 1979-07-13. p. 3. Archived from the original on 2026-03-08. Retrieved 2026-03-08.
  3. ↑ Weizman, Eyal (2007). Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation. Verso. p. 64. ISBN 978-1844671250. This initiated the first major debate within the Israeli General Staff concerning Israel's concept of defence. It was seen as a crucial issue over which Sharon, together with a handful of other officers — Israel Tal, Rafael Eitan and Matittyahu Peled — were to clash repeatedly with the rest of the General Staff. The argument was polarized in increasingly geometrical terms, until the defence proposals became fully embodied within two spatial models, both derived from existing military vocabulary: linear fortification and a dynamic defence nested in a network of strongpoints in depth. Sharon publicly accused his superiors of ignorance and stupidity, blaming them for the mounting war casualties along the construction site of the Line, and demanded that the static defence embodied in what he called 'the Israeli Maginot Line' be abandoned and replaced with a flexible system of "defence in depth" comprising independent strongpoints located on hilltops in an area stretching far back from the frontline, in a way that would allow military units to travel between these strongpoints, and, in case of invasion, attack the enemy's flank and surround it.
  4. ↑ Weizman, Eyal (2007). Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation. Verso. p. 60. ISBN 978-1844671250. The Allon plan, the first draft of which was presented to the government a few weeks after the end of the war, advocated the redrawing of state borders along the main topographical feature of the region, the Great Rift Valley, the deep tectonic crack that formed the eastern edge of the territories occupied by Israel. Allon proposed to annex a strip following the length of the rift, which extended from the Golan Heights in the north, through the Jordan Valley down to the southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula at the Egyptian coastal town of Sharm el-Sheikh. This strip would generate, according to Allon, 'maximum security and maximum territory for Israel with a minimum number of Arabs'. The fact that this strip was sparsely populated was due to the fact that during the war, wanting to secure its new borderlines, the Israeli military evacuated and decoyed the Palestinian villages of the Jordan Valley (except the city of Jericho), the Syrian towns and villages of the Golan Heights and all Egyptian citizens but the Bedouin in the Sinai. On this generally arid and now sparsely populated strip, remote from Israeli population centres, Allon proposed to establish a string of agricultural Kibbutz and Moshav settlements, as well as several paramilitary outposts of the NAHAL Corps — the settlements arm of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
  5. ↑ Database, E. C. F. "Sharon Plan (1977)". ecf.org.il. Retrieved 2026-03-08.
  6. ↑ "שרון: כביש חוצה ישראל ייסלל; תוכנית שבעת הכוכבים תתרחב לנגב" [Sharon: Cross-Israel Highway Will Be Paved; Seven Stars Plan to Expand to the Negev]. Globes (in Hebrew). 19 December 1996.
  7. ↑ הדפסה, חזרה (1991-09-25). "⁨⁨חדשות⁩, 25 ספטמבר 1991⁩ — הכוכבים שלים, הקו הירוק נוכל". Ma'ariv. p. 21. Retrieved 2026-03-09.
  8. ↑ Ruling Palestine: A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine (PDF) (Report). MIFTAH. 2005. Retrieved 9 March 2026.
  9. ↑ "Israeli Settlement Master Plans, 1976–1991". PASSIA (Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs). Retrieved 9 March 2026.
  10. ↑ Ruling Palestine: A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine (PDF) (Report). MIFTAH. 2005. Retrieved 9 March 2026.
  11. ↑ Shitrit, Lihi (2023). "Supply-side territoriality: reshaping a geopolitical project according to economic means" (PDF). Space and Polity. Taylor & Francis.
  12. ↑ The West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Geography of Occupation. Westview Press. 1993. p. 54.
  13. ↑ הדפסה, חזרה (1990-12-04). "יוקם רצף ישובים בין מוריעץלמיעמי". Ma'ariv (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2026-03-09.
  14. ↑ "The Seven Stars Plan for Jewish settlements in the West Bank". Jerusalem Story. Institute for Palestine Studies. Retrieved 9 March 2026.
  15. ↑ Schwake, Gabriel (2020-01-06). "Supply-side Territoriality: reshaping a geopolitical project according to economic means" (PDF). Space and Polity. 25 (1): 80 – via Taylor & Francis.
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