sovereign prior to Israel taking control of them. This view has been rejected by the International Court of Justice and the International Committee of the Red Cross. History Bronze Age The area in which Efrat was constructed was the site of an Ancient Israelite settlement during the Bronze Age. Archaeological excavations revealed an ancient Jewish cemetery consisting of a tumulus built over a platform structure and more than twenty Bronze Age burial caves of the shaft tomb type, many of which had been reused over long stretches of time. Classical antiquity One of the three ancient Judaean aqueducts built by King Herod during the Herodian dynasty of Judea to supply the capital city of Judea, Jerusalem, with enough water to meet the needs of its population of 600,000, mostly Jews along with smaller numbers of Samaritans and Roman soldiers. The aqueduct is known as (), in Hebrew. Modern Efrat Modern Efrat was established in 1983 by Moshe Moskovits, who became the first mayor of Efrat and Shlomo Riskin, an Orthodox rabbi from New York City who settled in Efrat and became its Chief rabbi. In January 2010, he made headlines, when he declared cigarettes as "treif" and together with Efrat's other chief rabbi Shimon Golan issued a prohibition against sale of cigarettes on halachic basis. Although traditionally considered one of the more politically moderate settlements, in the Knesset elections of November 2022 almost half the residents voted for the far-right Religious Zionist Party. Palestinian land claims According to ARIJ, Israel confiscated land from four nearby Palestinian villages in order to construct Efrat: 2,180 dunams from al-Khader, 1,713 dunams from Wadi an Nis, 421 dunams from Artas, 45 dunams from Khirbet Beit Zakariyyah. Demographics Efrat's population are mainly religious Zionist, with a small number of ultra-orthodox and of non-observant residents. There are more than twenty Orthodox synagogues, mainly Ashkenazi, but a Sephardi and a Yemenite synagogue also exist, and there are several Yeshivot, and Kollelim. The population includes native-born Israelis, and immigrants who have made aliyah from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, France, South Africa, Argentina, The Netherlands, Canada, and Russia. With a population of around 9,200 residents, Efrat is the largest settlement in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, one of the settlement blocs that all Israeli governments have said they want to retain under any final-status agreement with the Palestinians. In early 2009, the Israeli Civil Administration declared some