Совет Йеша: Объединение еврейских поселений на Западном берегу

Group of councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank

The Yesha Council (, Mo'etzet Yesha, which is the Hebrew acronym for Yehuda Shomron, Aza, lit. "Judea Samaria and Gaza Council") is an umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank (and formerly in the Gaza Strip), known by the Hebrew acronym Yesha. The Chairman of the Yesha Council is Shlomo Ne’eman who was elected in 2022. The CEO of the Yesha Council is Shira Libman, appointed in 2022.

The council was founded in the 1970s as the successor to Gush Emunim ("Bloc of the Faithful"), an organization formed to promote Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which they regarded as the return of Jews to their Biblical homeland. The Council consists of 24 democratically elected mayors and ten community leaders, representing municipalities with a combined population of around half a million. Its resettlement policy was criticised by the Sason Report. Its mandate is to assist Jewish settlements in every possible way. The council works to improve security by, for instance, arranging the acquisition of bullet proof ambulances and buses. The council works with the Israeli government to provide roads, electricity, and water to the settlements. In addition to municipal and security issues, the Council serves as the political arm of the Jewish residents of Yesha. The Council lobbies for their interests with the Knesset and the government. The Council carries on public relations campaigns for the settlements and has organized several large public protests.

In 2005 the Council led the protest campaign against the disengagement plan with peaceful mass protests: the human chain of 130,000, the Kfar Maimon march of 50,000, the Kotel rally of 70,000, and the Tel Aviv rally of 200,000. The council was praised by centrists for refraining from the use of violence—although some right wing activists did resort to violence. It was also criticized by the right for failing to prevent the disengagement.

The council chairman Dani Dayan said that settlers must not use violence to advance their means. He said that such actions were "morally bankrupt" and only serve to "hinder the settlers' struggle."

On 3 August 2010, it was reported that the Yesha Council together with My Israel, a network of online pro Israel activists committed to spreading Zionism online, were organizing people at a workshop in Jerusalem to teach them how to edit Wikipedia articles in a pro Israeli way. Around 50 people took part in the course. "We don't want to change Wikipedia or turn it into a propaganda arm," commented Naftali Bennett, director of the Yesha Council. "We just want to show the other side. People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day." "The idea is not to make Wikipedia rightist but for it to include our point of view," he said in another interview. A course participant explained that the course is not a "Zionist conspiracy to take over Wikipedia"; rather, it is an attempt to balance information about disputed issues presented in the online encyclopedia. [T]he goal of this workshop was to train a number of pro Israelis how to edit Wikipedia so that more people could present the Israeli side of things, and thus the content would be more balanced Wikipedia is meant to be a fair and balanced source, and it is that way by having people from all across the spectrum contributing to the content. Another participant was not positive about the publication of the initiative, warning that going public in past occasions has had a bad effect, and recommending that the initiative would be better taken underground. Wales, who himself is a supporter of Israel, insists on neutrality when editing articles related to Israel and the Israeli Palestinian conflict.