On a windswept hilltop deep inside the West Bank, Noa Alvily contemplates her family's future with remarkable equanimity, unfazed by political decisions taken less than an hour's drive away in Jerusalem.

In a few years time she hopes to have swapped her prefabricated home for a permanent house and to have enrolled her eight-month-old twin daughters into a new kindergarten on her doorstep. The close-knit community of around 20 young families will have grown, she expects, and Givat Haroeh, along with other fledgling settlements in the area, will be part of a secure, permanent Jewish presence on the land she believes is hers by divine right.

"We live in a beautiful and important place. People here are very dedicated. It's our country, it belongs to us - and we believe that with every breath we take," she says.

But if the Israeli government acts on a decision taken last week, Givat Haroeh and other unauthorised settler outposts built completely or partially on private Palestinian land will be demolished by the end of the year. The move will affect around 70 small communities dotted around the terraced hills of the West Bank, known by the biblical name of Judea and Samaria to their deeply religious Jewish inhabitants.

Noa, 28, and her husband Shachar, 30, shrug off the prospect of the army coming to tear down their home, believing they have God, righteousness and the track record of successive Israeli governments on their side. "This is the place the Lord has promised us," says Shachar, serving us warm chocolate cake baked by his wife.

A neighbour, Pnina Ben Eli, dropping off her child to be minded for a couple of hours, is scathing about the government policy. "I don't believe it will happen," she says. "They've said the same thing a few times in the past nine years [since Givat Haroeh was established] and we're still here. They change their position all the time."

She describes the policy as one of "ethnic cleansing". "It's impossible that there could be places that Jews are not allowed to live, especially in Israel." The question of legal ownership of the land is dismissed as a practical issue. "We received this land from the bible. On a spiritual or ideological level, it belongs to us."

Ben Eli points out that despite the outpost being designated "unauthorised", the residents pay taxes to local settler councils, receive utilities and services, and are protected by Israeli soldiers stationed at the outpost. Successive governments have either tacitly or explicitly encouraged settlers to move to the West Bank, and many of the large established settlements began as isolated outposts such as Givat Haroeh.

The reaction from settlers to the government's announcement last week was unambiguous. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was accused of "treason" and the announcement was described as a "declaration of war". It followed the demolition a week earlier of Havat Gilad, an outpost near the Palestinian city of Nablus, which sparked clashes between settlers and the army in the West Bank and protests in Jerusalem.

The residents of Givat Haroeh are reluctant to discuss whether they would violently resist any attempt to demolish the outpost. "I really don't want to answer that question," says Yehuda Ben Ali, Pnina's husband. "All sides in this conflict have an interest in saying there will be violence." The settlers, he says, have other tools to resist evacuation, namely political and public pressure. He points out that they command substantial support in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), adding that "almost all the people in Israel support us at a basic level. If there wasn't international pressure, there's no question that they're supporting us."

This view is not supported by most opinion polls over the years, which show a majority of Israelis backing the evacuation of smaller settlements as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The outposts are mostly tense places, suspicious of strangers and hostile to the media. In Givat Asaf, home to about 20 families in prefabs on privately-owned Palestinian land, we are firmly told we are not welcome and are escorted out of the outpost's gates.

An Israeli army officer, just finishing a week's duty guarding the unauthorised embryonic settlement, warns us to be careful. "They all have guns. They are better trained than I am," says the soldier, who does not want to give his name.

He fears there could be violent confrontations ahead, but there was no guarantee the government would follow through on its announcement. "Maybe it will happen, maybe not. It's very dynamic here," he says with a wry smile. "It's crazy that we have to protect these people. They are criminals."

The outpost dwellers peremptorily dismiss the claims of Palestinians to the land that has been occupied by Israel for 43 years. "If you check historically, you won't find any other nation what wanted this land," said Yehuda Ben Ali. The Palestinian people, he added, were an invention by the Arab countries, a weapon with which to wage war on Israel.

In the West Bank outposts, the inhabitants view the machinations of their government as mostly irrelevant. Pnina Ben Ali says life is sometimes hard, but the air is sweet and she is fulfilling a mission given to her by God. "I wanted to do something important in my life for the Jewish people, and this was the best way," she says. "We believe in God and the bible and our right to be here. We will never leave."