Amana (Organization)

Amana is a settlement-development organization affiliated with Gush Emunim. Historical accounts describe it as the movement’s settlement arm or operational body, while Amana describes itself as the settlement movement of Gush Emunim. Its central work has included developing communities, constructing homes, organizing groups of prospective residents, and supporting new communities until they can manage themselves.[1][2] In the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — it has been associated with both established communities and newer settlement projects.[3]

Amana’s importance lies in its role in turning a movement’s settlement objectives into durable institutions and practical development. Accounts describe it as a builder and coordinator, but also as an organization that recruits families, markets housing, and provides financial or organizational support. The organization’s own stated rationale is that settlement in highland areas can address projected population growth and crowding in Israel’s lowlands and coastal plain, and safeguard the conditions for the people’s continued existence.[2]

The scope and characterization of Amana’s work vary among sources. Some accounts emphasize its role in creating communities and strengthening settlement networks; others focus on public resources, construction east of the security barrier, and the establishment or support of outposts. Claims about legality, land use, and the consequences of these activities have been disputed, and government allegations should be distinguished from court findings and from Amana’s own account of its work.[4][5]

Amana emerged from Gush Emunim’s settlement activity during the 1970s. Historian Ehud Sprinzak describes Gush Emunim as protesting interim agreements with Egypt and Syria, organizing demonstrations emphasizing Jewish attachment to Judea and Samaria, and carrying out settlement operations during 1974–77. He characterizes some of the movement’s activity in that period as extralegal; this description concerns the broader movement and period, not a specific finding about Amana.[6]

Gush Emunim gained political influence through its 1974 activity at Sebastia and the Likud’s 1977 election victory. Yehuda Ben Meir’s account places Amana’s emergence in the subsequent institutional development of the settlement movement: as the movement grew to a scale at which it could perpetuate itself, institutional organizations including Amana and the Yesha Council took on functions previously associated with Gush Emunim.[1] Sprinzak likewise describes the creation of Amana and the Yesha Council in 1978 as transforming Gush Emunim from a loose association into a movement with a more permanent organizational structure.[6]

Sources differ on the exact dates attached to Amana’s founding and formal establishment. Sprinzak says Gush Emunim established Amana in 1978 as its official settlement organization, recognized by the World Zionist Organization.[6] The Encyclopaedia Judaica account gives 1980 for the establishment of Amanah, while Amana’s own website says it was founded in 1978.[7][2] JNS reports that it was established in 1976 and registered as an association in 1978.[8] A U.S. Treasury record lists the entity’s establishment date as February 18, 1979, under the name “Amana the Settlement Movement of Gush Emunim Central Cooperative Association Ltd.”[9]

After Menachem Begin’s election in 1977, Gush Emunim created Amanah to handle settlement logistics, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica account. In October 1978, Gush Emunim drew up a blueprint for a broad network of rural and urban settlements intended to emphasize Israeli sovereignty. The account says that no formal government or cabinet decision endorsed the plans, although public resources were made available for their gradual implementation. It also describes formal government recognition as enabling Amanah to receive government aid and funds.[7]

Amana’s creation was part of a wider shift from a movement centered on direct activism to institutions capable of maintaining settlement activity over time. My Jewish Learning describes Amana and the Yesha Council as taking over practical settlement and political work, contributing to Gush Emunim’s gradual decline through the 1980s.[10] A 2005 analysis similarly says that Amana and the Yesha Council succeeded Gush Emunim as institutional organizations. It reports that both received large allocations from the state budget, supporting sizable organizations, public-relations work, and large-scale projects.[1]

A National Library of Israel catalog record documents correspondence between Amana and Ofra in a file from 1989. The catalog describes a January initiative to establish a point at Beit Qad near Jenin and a June appeal asking settlements to take in Arab aides. These are descriptions of proposed initiatives in archival material; the record does not establish that the proposed point at Beit Qad was founded.[11]

Amana’s work has combined community organization, recruitment, construction, and assistance to settlements. The organization says it helps groups form settlement nuclei, supports their social and institutional organization, and accompanies them through the move to a community and afterward. It also says it helps new communities liaise with relevant bodies and develop social, organizational, and economic life until they are prepared for self-management.[2]

In its description of its aims, Amana says it establishes new communities and develops existing ones. It seeks to attract residents through public information, publicity, and marketing about the importance it assigns to settlement in Judea and Samaria. It also says it encourages communities to absorb immigrants from across the diaspora and offers assistance with absorption frameworks, financial help, and social support.[2] Avi Kay’s article describes Amana as recruiting Orthodox American Jews as potential residents. Kay situates this recruitment in a context where study in Israeli religious seminaries could strengthen ties to the Land of Israel and build personal connections relevant to decisions about settling in Israel.[12]

A 2007 event in Teaneck, New Jersey, illustrates Amana’s outreach beyond Israel. The World Jewish Congress reported that about 250 American Jews attended an Amana-organized event at an Orthodox synagogue to learn about purchasing homes in West Bank settlements. Amana representative Aliza Herbst said the organization was turning to North American buyers so homes could be rented to young Israeli families who wanted to move to the West Bank but could not afford to build. The report also recorded objections from Israeli and Palestinian organizations, including an Americans for Peace Now spokesperson’s argument that each additional West Bank settler made a two-state solution more difficult.[13]

Amana says most of its communities are rural and have up to 200 families, while larger communities may have hundreds of families and educational, cultural, and religious institutions. It describes its communities as including people of different ages and backgrounds, including immigrants and religious and secular residents.[2] A Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies paper characterizes Amana under Ze’ev Hever as an organizing force for settlement that was not based on profit, while noting that it took economic constraints into account. The paper gives Keida in the Binyamin region as an example: it says Keida and Nimrod were both founded in 1999, but Keida had about 80 families while Nimrod had no more than six. The author attributes much of the difference to Keida’s development by Amana and what the author describes as greater freedom from state planning and construction regulations in the West Bank.[14]

Construction and finance are important components of Amana’s activity. Amana says that its subsidiary, Binyanei Bar Amana, carries out construction projects in its communities, and describes its approach as providing good-quality homes without ostentation, at reasonable prices, and in line with residents’ needs.[2] Globes describes Amana as a central cooperative association whose members include about 80 rural and communal settlements, most in Judea and Samaria. It says Amana markets land and that Binyanei Bar Amana is the principal contractor building homes on plots marketed through the organization.[15]

A 2018 Globes report likewise described Binyanei Bar Amana as Amana’s commercial subsidiary and reported that Amana had established and built in many rural and communal settlements, including in Gush Etzion and Alon Shvut. The report also covered a development-project dispute between Binyanei Bar Amana and M.Y. Shaham Real Estate in Barkan; claims by either side in that business dispute are not established findings.[16]

David Makovsky’s 2022 report identifies Amana as Gush Emunim’s construction arm and says it coordinates much of the construction east of the security barrier, helps obtain legal authorization for construction there, and collects dues from settlements it has constructed to fund future projects. Citing an unspecified source, Makovsky estimates that these dues bring in about 100 million shekels annually. He says the revenue allows Amana to underwrite housing projects, offer subsidized loans to settlers, and withstand lengthy legal disputes over new settlements.[3]

The Washington Institute report identifies Zeev “Zambish” Hever as Amana’s chief executive and says he has ties to the Israeli Civil Administration, the IDF, and the Ministry of Housing, which he uses to promote settlement construction. It reports that Hever vowed in 2017 to grow the settler population to one million within ten to fifteen years.[3] The Times of Israel reported that Amana’s 2017 annual conference, led by Hever as secretary-general, used the theme “On our way to a million.” The stated target was more than doubling the West Bank settler population, which the article then put at about 450,000; Hever said it was achievable within ten to fifteen years.[17]

A 2026 INSS chapter attributes to Amana an initiative called the “million Jews in Judea and Samaria” plan. The chapter characterizes the plan as intended to reinforce and expand settlements, alter the region’s demographic balance, and establish facts on the ground to prevent evacuation of settlements even in the event of a political agreement. It says the Ministry of Construction and Housing encouraged and assisted the plan. Measures listed included affordable housing outside settlement blocs, construction within existing communities, campaigns to encourage settlement in remote communities, and identifying state lands or potential state lands in Area C.[4]

The INSS chapter also describes community outposts and agricultural farms within the framework it discusses, characterizing them as illegal outposts. It distinguishes community outposts, which it describes as having a community, administration, and permanent or temporary structures, from agricultural farms, which may consist of one to three families, volunteer youth, and temporary structures without community services. The chapter describes farms cultivating field crops, vineyards, almonds, and grapes, or operating sheep facilities with pens, feed storage, irrigation, dairies, and a residential cabin.[4]

A 2021 Times of Israel report said Amana did not own Sdeh Efraim Farm but had paid for a road to the hilltop. The report said a court found the road infringed on private Palestinian land but allowed it to remain. It attributed to Amana the view that farm outposts provide a relatively simple way to prevent Palestinian use of public land and expand the settlement movement’s footprint. Hever was quoted as saying, “One farm can protect land stretching over thousands of dunams.”[18]

Amana’s stated geographic remit is broader than Judea and Samaria. The organization says its purpose has included establishing settlements in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza region, as well as in the Golan Heights, Galilee, and Negev. It identifies Ofra, Mevo Horon, Kedumim, and Ma’ale Adumim as pioneering settlements, and says its headquarters are in Jerusalem.[2]

Historical sources associate Amana especially with nonagricultural cooperative settlements. The Library of Congress’s 1990 edition of Israel: A Country Study describes Amana as Gush Emunim’s settlement arm and says it was particularly associated with nonagricultural cooperative settlements, a form that developed in the mid-1970s with the aim of enhancing Jewish presence in the West Bank. The study places settlement in a broader context where housing costs and economic incentives, as well as religious and nationalist motivations, influenced settlement in the territories.[19]

The Library of Congress gives late-1986 figures of about 51,200 Jewish residents in the West Bank and 2,100 in the Gaza Strip, living in 122 localities across both areas. More than fifty localities were nonagricultural cooperative settlements, a type associated especially with Amana. These figures describe the wider settlement context and do not mean that Amana was responsible for all the residents or localities.[19]

The Encyclopaedia Judaica account gives a historical figure of well over 50 settlements in the Amanah network, nearly all in the West Bank, with a minority in Gush Katif. It describes most as community settlements, many functioning as commuter communities whose residents worked in Israeli metropolitan centers. Smaller and newer settlements could have around 15–20 families, while larger, more established communities such as Kedumim, Bet Aryeh, and Elkanah had more than 500 families. The account says prospective residents were approved by a general vote.[7] These are historical descriptions, not a current count of Amana’s network.

The Library of Congress study identifies Uri Elitzur as Amana’s secretary general in its account of Gush Emunim’s leadership and day-to-day management. In a later account, Makovsky identifies Hever as Amana’s chief executive, while reporting on his institutional relationships and settlement objectives.[19][3]

Amana illustrates how a movement’s settlement activity can become institutionalized through organizations dedicated to community formation, construction, recruitment, and long-term support. Sprinzak describes its establishment alongside the Yesha Council as giving Gush Emunim a permanent organizational structure; later accounts describe Amana as carrying practical settlement work as Gush Emunim’s direct role faded.[6][10]

The organization’s influence has been associated with a broad range of activities: developing rural and communal settlements, assisting residents and prospective residents, marketing housing, coordinating construction, and supporting new communities. Historical sources associate Amana with more than fifty cooperative or community settlements, although those network counts should not be treated as current figures.[19][7] Makovsky’s later report describes dues-funded housing projects and subsidized loans as further indications of the scale attributed to its work.[3]

Its significance is also bound up with political disputes over settlement policy. Amana presents settlement as a response to population pressures and as a means of sustaining the people’s future.[2] Critics and research organizations have focused on its reported support for outposts, land use, demographic objectives, and implications for political agreements.[3][4] Sanctions imposed by Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 2024 extended those disputes into international policy; the U.S. designation was subsequently removed after Executive Order 14115 was revoked.[20][9] The European Union’s May 2026 sanctions continued that international controversy.[21]

Amana’s access to public funds and the terms of land allocation have been contested. The 2005 INSS account says Amana and the Yesha Council received large allocations from the state budget, enabling organizational growth, public-relations activity, and large projects.[1] The Encyclopaedia Judaica account similarly links formal government recognition to government aid and funding.[7]

Municipal transfers to Amana became the subject of litigation. Peace Now petitioned over transfers from West Bank regional and local councils, arguing that Amana was a private cooperative and therefore ineligible for municipal funds under Interior Ministry guidelines. In December 2019, the High Court issued an interim order requiring municipalities to notify it before transferring funds to Amana during 2020. JNS reports that in 2021 the court ultimately rejected Peace Now’s petition, finding that Amana met the criteria of a “public institution.”[8]

Other litigation concerned land allocations and payments. A 2018 proposed class action alleged that Amana had received land through the Settlement Division without tenders or payment and marketed plots to residents; the report put the land at about 500,000 dunams. The applicants also alleged that families in many rural and communal settlements paid a monthly “Amana tax” of 30 shekels, collected through local committees and regional councils, and estimated a requested repayment of about 80 million shekels. These were allegations in a proposed action, not established findings.[15]

Amana rejected the proposed class action’s allegations as baseless. Its lawyer said Amana had no legal relationship with members of the settlements’ cooperative associations and did not collect the payments; if charges were collected, he said, the settlements’ own institutions had decided on and collected them. The report also said Amana asserted that Shaham owed money to Binyanei Bar Amana.[15]

In 2015, M.Y. Shaham Real Estate petitioned the High Court to regulate land allocations for rural settlements in Judea and Samaria and to stop allocations to Amana and Binyanei Bar Amana without tenders or payment. It also requested a criminal investigation. Amana, Binyanei Bar Amana, and the Settlement Division argued that they acted lawfully under agreements and government decisions and said they held no rights in the land. In 2019, the court dismissed the petition at the threshold, citing the petitioner’s lack of good faith and its business dispute with some respondents. The ruling did not decide the land-allocation claims on their merits.[22]

Peace Now has also been cited as the source of estimates that Amana held assets worth about 600 million shekels and had an annual budget of tens of millions of shekels. The Times of Israel reported those estimates as Peace Now’s claims and noted that the organization campaigns against the settlement movement; they are not figures independently established in the material here.[23]

Amana’s activity has drawn criticism and government measures in several countries. In 2007, the World Jewish Congress report on the Teaneck home-sales event recorded objections that marketing settlement homes undermined peace efforts; an Americans for Peace Now spokesperson argued that additional West Bank settlement made a two-state solution more difficult.[13] More recent disputes have centered on outposts, land use, and government allegations of violence or dispossession. Such allegations should be distinguished from judicial findings.[5]

Canada sanctioned Amana in June 2024 among entities it said had facilitated, supported, or financially contributed to alleged violent acts against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank. The United Kingdom sanctioned Amana in October 2024; its Foreign Office said Amana had overseen the establishment of illegal outposts and provided resources to settlers involved in threatening or perpetrating aggression and violence against Palestinian communities. These were the governments’ stated grounds for their measures.[20]

On November 18, 2024, the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions against Amana and its subsidiary Binyanei Bar Amana Ltd. Treasury characterized Amana as a settlement-development organization and said it had provided a loan to Israeli settler Isaschar Manne and partnered in forming Meitarim Farm, which the State Department had sanctioned in July 2024. Treasury alleged that Amana supported farming outposts through financing, loans, and infrastructure and used them to expand settlements and seize land. OFAC said it sanctioned Amana for responsibility or complicity in, or direct or indirect participation in, seizure or dispossession of property by private actors affecting the West Bank. These are government allegations and characterizations, not uncontested findings.[5]

Treasury described Binyanei Bar Amana as a construction and development company that builds and sells homes in settlements and outposts in the West Bank. It said the subsidiary was sanctioned because it was owned or controlled by, or acted on behalf of, Amana.[5] A Treasury record lists Binyanei Bar Amana Ltd. as established on February 8, 1990, with the organization type “Construction of buildings.”[9]

Amana rejected the grounds for the U.S. sanctions. In a statement reported by JNS, it said it had worked for decades to develop communities “in line with legal protocol and in cooperation with state institutions,” and called the sanctions “unfounded slander” with “no factual basis.”[24] The U.S. designation was later removed as a matter of policy: after Executive Order 14115 was revoked on January 20, 2025, OFAC removed all persons designated under that order from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List and unblocked property blocked under it. Amana was among the entities removed. This procedural removal did not adjudicate the underlying allegations.[9]

Sanctions status differed among jurisdictions and over time. JNS reported that the European Union sanctioned Amana in May 2026 under its Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime. The report described Amana as a settlement-building cooperative affiliated with Gush Emunim and said the EU accused listed organizations of supporting violence and the displacement of Palestinians in the territory.[21]

The organization’s role in outposts has also been described in sharply different terms. Makovsky’s report characterizes Amana as promoting outposts not authorized by the government and describes this activity as illegal. The 2026 INSS chapter likewise discusses illegal outposts and agricultural farms as part of the framework associated with its account of the “million Jews” plan.[3][4] Amana’s own account, by contrast, presents its development work in institutional terms, while its response to the U.S. sanctions says it operates in cooperation with state institutions and according to legal protocols.[2][24]