In the Palestinian village of al-Mughayr, in the West Bank, remnants of flash bombs and sound grenades residents say have been tossed by Israeli settlers have been thrown to hang over wires. (Anne-Marie O'Connor/For The Washington Post)

Los Angeles native Aaron Katsof thinks it is “absurd” that even the Israeli government considers his Jewish village here an “illegal outpost.”

“Our first trailers came from the Ministry of Housing,” he said of the community of 230. “You can’t just bring water and electricity here without the army being involved.”

Esh Kodesh, or “Holy Fire,” may not be authorized by the state of Israel, but it is served by Israeli infrastructure and protected by Israeli troops — and it has lots of company.

Since Israel came under increased international pressure in the 1990s to stop establishing new settlements, about 100 officially unauthorized outposts have been founded in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. These are in addition to the 120 established settlements, which are fully recognized by Israel — though not by the international community.

The European Union and the United Nations consider all settlements illegal under international law. The United States calls the settlements “illegitimate” and an obstacle to peace, a view Israel disputes.

Palestinian farmer Rabah Ali, 49, photographed in May, stands by a dead horse he said was dumped on his land in Turmus Ayya, in the West Bank, by settlers of Adei Ad, an unauthorized outpost behind him that is seeking legal status. (Anne-Marie O'Connor/For The Washington Post)

Now, as France leads a push for a new round of talks to produce a Palestinian state, the outposts are being subjected to growing scrutiny.

A report this month by the Middle East Quartet, a mediation group that includes the United States, said Israel has authorized 19 outposts in the past decade, with 13 more in the process of being approved, “expanding the footprint of existing settlements, if not effectively creating new ones.”

[Middle East Quartet faults Israeli settlement activity, Palestinian violence]

On Tuesday, State Department spokesman John Kirby cited the outpost legalizations as “fundamentally undermining the prospects of a two-state solution.”

Critics of settlement building see the outposts as a game of hide-and-seek, with Israel publicly disavowing the areas while using them to expand settlement on land claimed by Palestinians for a future state.

“The message to the settlers is, whatever you build, the government will approve,” said Hagit Ofran, director of the Settlement Watch project run by Peace Now, an Israeli group.

More than 400,000 Israelis live in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and their conservative votes helped boost Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to victory in 2015.

Miri Maoz-Ovadia, a spokeswoman for the settlers’ Yesha Council, said all outposts should be authorized, because Israelis living in outposts “deserve the same rights as their brothers and sisters.”

The outposts tend to be smaller, younger and home to the most ideologically hard-line settlers. About 80 occupy some Palestinian-owned land, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group.

Esh Kodesh is one of five outposts seeking Israeli recognition as neighborhoods of the authorized settlement of Shiloh, Katsof said.

Their quest has been complicated by allegations that Shiloh outposts have been used as bases for Jewish extremists accused of crimes that include an arson attack that killed a Palestinian mother, father and toddler last year in the nearby Palestinian village of Duma.

[Jewish extremists torch Palestinian homes, killing toddler, authorities say]

The dusty road to Esh Kodesh winds past a red sign marking the outpost of Geulat Zion, or “Redemption of Zion,” where authorities dismantled the home of accused Duma arsonist Amiram Ben-Uliel.

Esh Kodesh started in 2000 with Israeli-supplied trailers, Katsof said as he showed visitors around the outpost recently, wearing jeans and a holstered Smith & Wesson pistol. The Israeli government also built their roads, he said.

A cellphone tower recently appeared on a nearby hill, but Israeli phone companies still balk at providing landlines to unauthorized outposts in the “Wild West Bank,” Katsof said — a reluctance he attributes to U.S. disapproval. “It’s like, ‘Well, what would Obama say?’ ”

Katsof, 32, moved to Israel when he was 18 and joined Esh Kodesh six years ago with his wife, who is expecting their sixth child. He tends his vineyard and builds playgrounds for Amana, the settlement group for which Israel’s Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel once worked.

Since 2000, the outposts east of Shiloh have grown from a few trailers to 250 families, with more than 1,000 residents, according to Katsof.

In that time, Shiloh outposts have become ringed with “circles of violence,” said Yesh Din spokesman Gilad Grossman.

Fires have been set in two local mosques. Settlers have clashed with Palestinians in their fields. Graffiti mentioning Esh Kodesh has been left at several vandalism sites.

One resident of Esh Kodesh was convicted of kidnapping and beating a teenage Palestinian shepherd and kicking to death his newborn lamb, according to Yesh Din. An Israeli court recently ordered him to move his vineyard off land owned by a Palestinian farmer.

Yesh Din said 91.6 percent of crimes against Palestinian people and property in the West Bank go unsolved.

Grossman of Yesh Din said settler attacks are designed to make Palestinians afraid to farm their land so it will be abandoned, declared to be under state ownership and turned over to settlements.

“Settler ideology is that Jewish dominance of the land has to be total. You have to show who’s boss,” said Shlomo Fischer, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute in Jerusalem. “So the outposts come looking for a fight, marching into Palestinian villages, destroying olive trees.”

Katsof admitted that Esh Kodesh settlers have ventured into nearby fields — he said for defensive purposes — with one confrontation in 2011 ending with a Palestinian being shot dead by Israeli security forces.

“Security-wise, you don’t wait until they get to your doorstep,” Katsof said. “You stop them far away.”

Last year, as U.S. diplomats visited the farmland of Palestinian Americans who complained that settlers were vandalizing their olive trees, residents of the Shiloh outpost of Adei Ad came and threw stones at staffers and their vehicles.

Wadi al-Qam, 63, a Palestinian American grandfather from the village of Turmus Ayya, said Shiloh outpost settlers are trying to block Palestinian access to 1,200 acres of local farmland — after seizing an equal portion outright.

Adei Ad spokesman Tzuri Amior declined to comment.

Tamina Nessen, 35, a Palestinian American mother of four who lives in Chicago and the Palestinian village of al-Mughayr, said her family owns land on which Adei Ad is built.

Nessen said settlers have beaten her cousin and elderly uncle, torched her car, destroyed olive trees and set fire to two local mosques.

In May, she said, settlers marched in at midnight, throwing military sound grenades and flash bombs, and one landed on her patio.

“It’s a lifestyle now,” she said, “a bad one.”

Nessen said Israeli soldiers took their security cameras that recorded the attacks, woke her family for 2 a.m. identification checks and poured out olive oil, the livelihood of Palestinian subsistence farmers.

Settlers enjoy touting their biblical ties to a community they started with just a few trailers. But for Palestinians — who face an Israeli bid to confiscate hundreds of acres near Shiloh outposts, Yesh Din says — the appearance of a lone trailer is ominous.

“See that trailer?” Rabah Ali, 49, said, standing in his fields in Turmus Ayya, flanked by a dead horse and sheep he said were dumped by Adei Ad settlers, and a house he said they built on his land. “Adei Ad started with just one trailer, too.”

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Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world