Israeli settlement in the West Bank
Beitar Illit
Beitar Illit is a Haredi Jewish-Israeli settlement organized as a city council in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, ten kilometres (6 mi) southwest of Jerusalem in the West Bank.
Beitar Illit is one of Israel's largest and most rapidly growing settlements, and in 2024 had a population of 71,697.
How locals move
Getting around Beitar Illit the local way
- Get inHitchhiking (described below) can be difficult if you have a suitcase.
- Get inIf you prefer to hitchhike, take the 31 or 32 local buses to the trempiada (see below).
- Get inIf you don't have a car, the fastest, cheapest and easiest travel option is hitchhiking, or in Israeli English, "to catch a tremp".
- Get inThe main hitchhiking hub is in the southern exit from Jerusalem, a place called "Tzomet HaMinharot", or informally the trempiada.
- Get inFrom here you can get another tremp to a specific settlement, although many Israelis consider it unsafe to hitchhike here (in the past, it has been the site of kidnappings and shootings by Palestinians).
- Get inFrom Beit Shemesh, hitchhiking is easiest, but the 409 bus also runs several times a day.
- Get aroundThe only exception is Efrat, which is very long and narrow, so hitchhiking or taking an (infrequent) bus may be more effective.
- Get aroundHitchhiking (from within a settlement) is a safer and faster option.
From Wikivoyage: Gush Etzion, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-07.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Eliran t (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.