About 268,000 Jewish colonists believe that God has given them the West Bank. They base their claim on the Old Testament. In it God promises Abraham that the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan river belongs to the Jewish people. Since the conquest of the West Bank in 1967, the colonists have been actively supported by Israeli politics. But the West Bank also includes settlements that have been built without the permission of the authorities. The residents of these settlements insist that it is their right to occupy the whole region. In recent years tensions have risen between these colonists and their less radical countrymen. Especially the clearance of illegal settlements has led to riots.

Yonathan Weitzman (b. 1977, Israel) and Ronen Zvulun (b. 1970, Israel) photographed the everyday, lives of colonists on the West Bank. Zvulun works for Reuters in Jerusalem, Weitzman is a freelancer for Corbis.