In both the Israeli and Western media, “settlers”—i.e., Jewish residents of the West Bank—are often depicted as politically and religiously homogeneous and generally assumed to be fanatics. As Akiva Bigman explains, however, settlers are split nearly evenly among ultra-Orthodox, religious-Zionist, and secular camps:
No one doubts that religious Zionists played a large part in the settlement movement and that they are worthy of great praise for this. But we need to keep the bigger picture in mind and fit the image to the facts and not the other way around. As a truly national project, various populations took part in the settlement movement, and most of those who live in Judea and Samaria live in settlements and towns established on government initiative or at least outside the settlements [founded by the Gush Emunim movement].
Religious Zionist leaders . . . understood reality, realizing that the settlement project must be a national, not a sectorial affair. They didn’t say that secular Jews wouldn’t come. Instead, they built settlements open to all—and they came, so much so that religious Zionists are a minority across the Green Line. The story of settlement in Judea and Samaria is one of a national, joint effort of religious Zionists, secular right-wingers, and many ḥaredi Jews besides. But something happened along the way. The focus on narrow sectorial interests turned a national project into one identified solely with one sector. This is a historical error of the first magnitude, a misrepresentation of the facts and a political blunder.
Read more on Mida: http://mida.org.il/2015/04/19/the-myth-of-the-religious-zionist-settler/