Revava

Revava is located in western Samaria near Ariel, approximately a half-hour's drive from Petah Tikva and Tel Aviv.[3] It is close to the Palestinian villages of Hares and Deir Istiya.[6] The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics assigns Revava locality code 3795 and places it within the Samaria Regional Council.[2]

Reporting describes Revava as a religious community settlement. Its location provides relatively direct access to the Gush Dan metropolitan area while placing it among the Jewish and Palestinian communities of central Samaria.[3][6]

Revava was founded in 1991.[1] Its population subsequently grew from 389 residents in 1999 to 1,113 in 2009, 2,824 in 2020, 3,108 in 2022, and 3,378 in 2025.[1]

On September 26, 2010, about 2,000 settlers and supporters rallied in Revava and released balloons in the hours before Israel's ten-month construction moratorium on West Bank settlements expired. The event occurred amid diplomatic efforts to keep direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks from collapsing.[5]

On March 22, 2021, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended a cornerstone-laying ceremony for a new Revava neighborhood and voiced support for regulating unrecognized outposts.[7] In June 2023, Israeli authorities granted final planning approval for 381 additional homes in Revava as part of a package advancing approximately 5,700 settlement units.[8]

Revava's recorded population increased more than eightfold between 1999 and 2025.[1] A 2014 account described a few hundred Orthodox Jewish families and students attending girls' and boys' yeshivot, reflecting the community's predominantly religious character at that time.[3]

The same account noted a sign at the entrance reading "Don't give in to Kerry," which the author interpreted as reflecting local political views and a commitment to remaining in place.[3] In June 2026, a 136-million-shekel infrastructure initiative was expected to connect Revava to the national wastewater-treatment system serving central Israel.[9]

The principal local institutions identified in a 2014 account included a newly built synagogue, separate girls' and boys' yeshivot, and an expanding nursery school.[3] The account also noted new housing construction, while later reporting characterized Revava as a large religious community with well-maintained streets.[3][6] These descriptions present its built environment chiefly in terms of religious, educational, and residential institutions.

Revava is grouped with Ariel, Barkan, and Kiryat Netafim in a Washington Institute profile of the Ariel settlement bloc.[10] A broader description of the bloc places Revava among its communities and characterizes the area as covering approximately 47 square miles with about 37,000 settlers.[4] The Washington Institute profile listed Revava's population as 1,075, using Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics figures from either 2007 or 2008 without specifying which year applied to Revava.[10]

Planning described by Ynet envisions Revava expanding westward and roughly doubling in size. The existing plan would form a settlement bloc north of the Trans-Samaria Highway that includes Revava, Yakir, Kiryat Netafim, Barkan, Havat Yair, and nearby shepherding farms and outposts. Hillel Roth, a Revava resident and deputy head of the Civil Administration, was reported to have been assigned a role in implementing it.[6]

Revava is part of the broader legal and political debate over Israeli settlements. Most of the international community considers the settlements contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel maintains that the West Bank was not legally occupied because no recognized sovereign held it when Israel took control in 1967, while another Israeli argument holds that the Convention's prohibition on forcible population transfer does not apply to Israelis moving there voluntarily.[11][12]

Land-ownership and planning claims relating to Revava have been disputed. Peace Now initially reported that 71.15% of its land was privately owned by Palestinians and later revised the figure to 22%; CAMERA reported that a Jerusalem Magistrates Court judge subsequently found against Peace Now and ordered compensation and a public apology.[13] A translated excerpt of the Israeli Ministry of Defense's Spiegel Database records eight buildings on Revava's eastern side outside an approved plan, on what it calls purchased land, as well as roads opened outside state land.[14] Neither source establishes the ownership status of all land in Revava. A Palestinian activist's 2004 first-person essay separately alleged that Revava was built amid an olive grove belonging to Harres and that trees were cut, burned, or uprooted while access to remaining trees was restricted; these claims were not independently corroborated in the available sources.[15]

In a separate civil dispute, Insight Construction filed a NIS 4 million lawsuit concerning a 34-apartment project. The company alleged that approvals were conditioned on concessions including an apartment and office space for the settlement rabbi, parking, the relocation of prefabricated buildings, contributions to Independence Day celebrations, and unrelated development work costing about NIS 930,000. It also alleged that water was disconnected and an apartment's locks were changed after it refused to transfer the unit. The local committee declined to litigate the claims in the media, while the Samaria Regional Council called the allegations against it baseless.[16]