Who are the ‘Hilltop Girls’ behind Israel’s ‘soft settlement’ strategy?

A radical movement of young Israeli women is leaving civilian life and education behind to live in rudimentary hilltop tents across the occupied West Bank.

Dubbed the “Hilltop Girls”, this group champions a strategy of “soft settlement”, replacing weapons and military patrols with seemingly mundane daily activities.

By portraying their presence as a natural, family-oriented social project, they aim to legitimise the gradual seizure of private Palestinian land and the establishment of new outposts.

The women are in many ways an extension of the Hilltop Youth a radical religious Zionist group that emerged in 1998 when then-Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon urged settler youths to seize West Bank hilltops to preempt final status negotiations.

While the broader movement is infamous for orchestrating deadly pogroms and seizing territory by force, the female offshoot embraces an ideology geared towards establishing a “Greater Israel” that extends beyond historic Palestine to include Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.

To normalise their presence, the Hilltop Girls heavily rely on social media.

Outpost accounts publish promotional videos aiming to move away from the more violent images associated with marauding Israeli settlers, who are often backed and shielded by the country’s security forces.

The female settlers claim they do not kill Palestinians or assault landowners, but merely cook and hang laundry like any other group of women.