use the exclusive exurb village to commute to work in the metropolis. All residents were to share an "ideological-social background. The planning envisaged nuclear family housing in an amenable natural ambiance. The sum total of people in any such community was planned to be restricted to no more than a few hundred families. A seminal role in the extension of the model into the Palestinian territories was played by the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and Amanah, Gush Emunim's settlement branch in the West Bank. Recognition of these exurbs as community settlements developed only gradually, since they differed from the standard norms of being 'cooperative' and 'productive'. Gush Emunim pushed this type of settlement, designed in dense networks, because it was best suited to hilly terrain, where agricultural and water resources were poor, and where the density of Palestinian habitation high. Life was based on family networks and partial cooperation, adapted to housing white-collar people with jobs in Israel. According to Elisha Efrat, Gush Emunim intended to establish Israeli Jewish settlement as an irreversible reality in the Palestinian territories. The mountain strip community settlements were developed in two strategically parallel lines: the first central string of settlements runs parallel to the main road connecting the five major Arab cities of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, while the second, east to the watershed, runs parallel to the Allon Highway. The objective of this design is to create blockages hindering Palestinians from expanding their towns in the direction of the road, and impeding the conurbation of their communities lying on either sides of the road. The concept was institutionalized in the Drobless Plan (1978) drawn up by the WZO, which set down the guidelines for thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. The first community settlement, Ofra, was established in 1975, and four of the first five settlements were unauthorized. The reevaluation and recognition of such settlements as cooperative associations was based on the ascendancy to government of the Likud party, which seconded the rapid growth of closed exurbs in which religious nationalists played a dominant role. The Gush Emunim plan was eventually adopted by both the World Zionist Organization and Israel's Ministry of Agriculture. With the ascendancy of the Likud Party, community settlements rapidly expanded in number: by 1987, there were a total of 95 and two years later, most of the 115 settlements established were of