A recent study by B'tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, shows that while the built-up areas of the settlements take up only 1.7percentt of the land in the West Bank, the area encompassed within the municipal boundaries of the settlements takes up 6.8percentt of the land.
Refugee economies are part of complex systems that go beyond their communities and the boundaries of particular settlements.
Israel defines the freeze as a pledge to refrain from constructing housing except within the boundaries of existing settlements.
But the boundaries of existing settlements were large, and over the next decade, the settler population more than doubled and now stands at nearly 300,000.
But while the outposts are major sources of friction between settlers and Palestinians, much more of the new building has taken place within the expansive municipal boundaries of existing settlements.
Although population census and satellite data have been available for some time, until now minimal effort had been made to combine these two kinds of information to capture the geographic boundaries of human settlements.
Under the arrangements outlined on Thursday night by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel plans to build within the boundaries of existing settlements adjacent to them, and when that is "not possible", close to those blocs.
The first governors were instructed to "conciliate the affections" of "the natives," but mutual curiosity soon gave way to misunderstanding, competition for scarce resources, and the impact of disease as the British settlers first struggled to survive and then began to push out the boundaries of their settlements.
The municipal boundaries of many settlements in the West Bank are extensive, enabling Israel to argue that housing units built near the fringes of those boundaries are not new settlements, but only neighborhoods of exiting ones.
