JERUSALEM: The number of Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank surged past 421,000 in 2016, a settler group said Thursday.
The Yesha council said the number of settlers in the territory had grown by 3.9 percent since 2015, twice the rate of population growth inside Israel.
Its figures exclude residents of settlements in annexed east Jerusalem, home to more than 200,000 Israelis.
It said growth had slowed slightly since 2012 because of building freezes by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government under international pressure, particularly from the Obama administration.
The Israeli parliament passed a law Monday allowing the Jewish state to expropriate private Palestinian land for Jewish settler outposts.
The law prompted international outcry -- although US President Donald Trump's administration was conspicuously silent.
It legalises dozens of wildcat outposts and thousands of settler homes in the occupied West Bank.