Megilot Regional Council (, ''Mo'atza Azorit Megilot''), also Megilot Dead Sea Regional Council, is a regional council in the Judean Desert of the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, near the western shores of the

Dead Sea The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...

. It covers six

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Israeli Jews, Jewish identity or ethni ...

s. With only about 1,400 residents, it is

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

's smallest regional council.Population Summary Tables 2005
Central Bureau of Statistics Its municipal offices are located in Vered Yeriho.

Etymology

The name "Megilot" means scrolls. It refers to the fact that the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...

were discovered in

Qumran Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...

, which lies within the council's governing area, near Kalya.

Communities

There are six communities in the council: four

kibbutzim A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, i ...

, one

moshav A moshav (, plural ', "settlement, village") is a type of Israeli village or town or Jewish settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 and 1 ...

, and one other community.

Kibbutzim

* Almog * Beit HaArava * Mitzpe Shalem * Kalya

Moshav

* Vered Yeriho

Other community

* Bait Hagla * Ovnat

References

External links

Megilot Regional Council homepage (Hebrew)
{{coord, 31, 49, 34.17, N, 35, 25, 56.52, E, display=title, type:adm1st_region:IL Israeli regional councils in the West Bank Judaean Desert