Approximately 60,000 American Jews live in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to a study by an Oxford University scholar.

Sara Hirschhorn’s research on the makeup of settlers in the West Bank has revealed what she called a “strikingly over-represented” number of Jewish Americans.

“This provides hard evidence that this constituency is strikingly over­represented, both within the settler population itself and within the total population of Jewish American immigrants in Israel,” Hirschhorn said, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Hirschhorn is planning to publish her new book, “City on a Hilltop: Jewish American Settlers in the Occupied Territories Since 1967,” next year.

A main focus of Hirschhorn’s research deals with American Jews who immigrated to Israel in the 1960s and 1970s and played a key role in the settlement movement.

The scholar said her findings dispute the widely-held belief that many of these American Jews left the United States because they were unsuccessful back home and came to Israel in search of a better life.

“In fact, these assumptions are patently false,” said Hirschhorn. “What my studies reveal is that they were young, single, highly­ educated – something like 10 percent of American settlers in the occupied territories hold PhDs, they’re upwardly mobile, they’re traditional but not necessarily Orthodox in their religious practice, and most importantly, they were politically active in the leftist socialist movements in the US in the 1960s and 70s,” she stated.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.

An armed Israeli soldier holds a Palestinian boy during clashes with Palestinian protesters following a march against illegal settlement construction in the West Bank on August 28, 2015. (AFP photo)

The settlers, mostly armed, regularly attack Palestinian villages and farms and set fire to their mosques, olive groves, and other properties.

The illegal settlers have committed 11,000 assaults against Palestinian residents and their properties across the West Bank since January 2015, the Arab League said earlier this month.