Carmel (Israeli settlement)

The name Carmel was chosen due to the moshav's close proximity to the location of biblical Carmel (Joshua 15:55).[5] Carmel is mentioned in 1 Samuel 25:2 as a place where Nabal of Maon had property.[2]

Initially founded in 1980, next to the land on which the Hadaleen Bedouin tribe live, as a Nahal military-establishment through a "military seizure order", the settlement was "civilianized" in 1981.[2]

Reuta Beth midrash was established in 2001[6] which is also a hesder yeshiva.

According to Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, writing in an editorial in 2014 on what he called the "morally repugnant" nature of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, contrasted the settlement of Carmel with the Palestinian village of Umm al-Kheir, writing that while the Palestinians are barred from connecting their home to the electric grid and live in tents and huts as the Israeli army demolishes any permanent structure they erect, Carmel is "a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb. It has lush gardens, kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes. It also has a gleaming, electrified poultry barn that it runs as a business." Kristof quotes an Israeli human rights activist remarking on how the chickens in the poultry barn have more access to electricity than the Palestinian residents of Umm al-Kheir.[7]

Haaretz noted about this in 2011: "Right next to the stately country homes - complete with air-conditioning, drip-irrigation gardens and goldfish ponds - a few extended families including old men, old women and infants live in dwellings made of tin, cloth and plastic siding, though there are a few cinder-block structures, too. They tread on broken, barren ground. They have no running water. They are not connected to the power grid that lights up every settlement and outpost in this remote region. They have no access road."[2]