page_title: Psagot
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Psagot / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Mateh Binyamin Regional council building in Psagot
context_page_description: Psagot is an Israeli settlement in the West Bank located north of Jerusalem on Tawil hill adjacent to Ramallah, al-Bireh, and Kokhav Ya'akov. Established in 1981, it is organised as a community settlement and falls under the jurisdiction of Binyamin Regional Council, with the council's headquarters located there. In 2018 it had a population of 1,903.
  The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.
context_section_description: The Arabic name of the hill is Jabel Tawil (long mountain).
  In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Jabel Tawil came under Jordanian rule. It was annexed by Jordan in 1950.
  Before 1967, Jabel Tawil was known to locals as "Kuwaiti hill" because of numerous visitors from the Persian Gulf who hiked in the area. In 1964, some of the land was purchased by the Jerusalem municipality for a future tourist resort. In the Six-Day War, it came under Israeli occupation. From September 1976, Arabs were prohibited from building in the area.
  According to ARIJ, Israel confiscated 780 dunams of land from the nearby Palestinian town of Al-Bireh in order to construct  Psagot.
  There is also an archaeological site near some of the Caravillas on the hill of Psagot.
  In 1981, Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Minister of Defense, told Pinchas Wallerstein, head of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, that he would support initiatives to settle the area. In July 1981, Wallerstein moved the council headquarters to the hill, then occupied by a military intelligence base. Five families from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit VeGan took up residence there. A year later, they were joined by a group from the Kerem B'Yavneh yeshiva who came to create a kollel.
caption: Mateh Binyamin regional council headquarters, Psagot
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