But the sounds wafting through the air - the constant clank of construction, and the Muslim call to prayer from nearby Palestinian villages - speak to the larger context in which their new homes are located.

All three families have recently bought homes in West Bank settlements, where the rate of population growth - three times that of Israel alone - is the subject of great global dispute.

For the past decade, an annual average of more than 10,000 newcomers have settled in this disputed territory the biggest growth spurt, in sheer numbers, in recent Israeli history.

To Palestinians, it means an expansion of the occupation.

In the Israeli narrative the growth is beginning to look like little more than suburbanization. They came in search of quiet bedroom communities that boast ample space, pretty landscapes - and some of the best home values in Israel.

Through the lens of the international community, West Bank growth impedes renewed efforts to bring about a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bridging that disconnect is a major challenge for President Obama, who is expected this week to try to restart Middle East peace talks at the U.N. General Assembly, where he's scheduled to meet with Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But who are the people who would choose to settle in the midst of such unsettled conflict?

The bulk of settlers today, according to various surveys, come mostly for economic or "lifestyle" reasons. About 30 percent of those are ultra-Orthodox Jews for whom the primary goal is living in an affordable religious community, irrespective of whether it lies beyond the Green Line, Israel's pre-1967 borders. New immigrants, such as Americans and those from the former Soviet Union, make up a smaller portion.

Generally most don't like to be called settlers because, as one settlement council head says, settlers have been made out to be the world's "pariahs." But they might agree to be called the new settlers, if the word were to be used in the most positive sense, as in the early American pioneers.

With the West Bank in Israel's hands for 42 years, many middle-of-the-road Israelis see little reason not to move there - particularly to long-established, larger settlements, or those close to the Green Line.

They're educated, often upper-middle-class, and not exclusively from right-wing backgrounds. And unlike the settlers who tend to grab headlines, they're not interested in using force or violence to stop another evacuation of settlements, largely expected to be a feature of any Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty.

But why take the risk of investing in a home on disputed territory? Among other reasons, settlers are bearish on the prospects of the peace process leading anywhere soon - if ever.

"This area is not likely to ever be evacuated," says Moti Ovadiah, who moved to Kiryat Netafim a year ago, shortly after his wife, Vered, gave birth to their son, Ishai.

Kiryat Netafim, tucked into a comely, mountainous area - from which the Tel Aviv skyline is visible - is next to the settlement of Barkan and its large industrial park.

It's a sleepy area with little tension between the Jewish settlement and neighboring Palestinians villages, whose men work in Barkan.

And the price is right: The Ovadiahs paid US$292,000 for a 1,300-square-foot, three-bedroom home. A comparable property would cost at least triple in any of the outlying Tel Aviv neighborhoods where Moti and Vered both grew up.

Ideology

Ideology was what brought the first waves of settlers into the land Israel captured on the west bank of the Jordan River in the 1967 war, some of them keen to return to earlier settlements they'd lost in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to Israel's establishment. In the early 1970s, a socioreligious movement called Gush Emunim, or bloc of the faithful, drew to settlements people motivated by the concept that Israel's success in 1967 was divinely inspired, that the Jewish people's return to their biblical homeland signaled the coming of the messianic age. While that worldview continues to attract some, the majority of today's new arrivals come primarily for practical considerations.

"Around 1981, many Israelis started moving out for better housing and the general environment - quality-of-life settlers - and that represents the majority who are coming now," says Michael Feige, a sociologist and anthropologist at Ben-Gurion University and author of the recently published "Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories."

"Economically, it's a good deal to go to the settlements. It always has been," he says. But whereas moving to a settlement once meant living a slightly more precarious existence, it's now becoming a largely safe, suburban one. Settlements in commuting distance to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are particularly popular.

"There are places where the metropolis is moving east," says Professor Feige. So settlements feel so close for commuters that "people moving there don't think they're moving to the West Bank."

More recently, he points out, even ultra-Orthodox Israelis have been moving to settlements for economic reasons more than for ideological ones. The two largest settlements in the West Bank are now Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit, ultra-Orthodox minicities where growth last year was 9.3 percent and 8 percent respec-tively.

This brings with it a shift in how settlements figure in the Israeli psyche. "

The ideological tension today is much lower than it was 20 or 30 years ago," notes Feige, "[when] it threw the whole future of Zionism and Israel's raison d'etre into question. And today, it's seen as just one issue. After so many years of arguing on the subject, Israelis are tired of it."

What's more, says Ephraim Yaar, a pollster and analyst at Tel Aviv University, Israelis feel less certain about whether pulling out of the territory brings peace – particularly after the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, followed by a rain of low-tech Palestinian rockets on southern Israel.

"[T]his had a profound effect, including on those on the Israeli left. There is a hardening of the position of Israelis, undoubtedly related to what happened in Gaza," Professor Yaar says.

And yet, when questioned about the bigger picture, the majority of Israelis, he notes, support a two-state solution, along with the concomitant expectations of settlement evacuations.

"Broadly, the Israeli public would be willing to evacuate all the settlements that are outside a major block, provided the Palestinians would reciprocate."

Tel Aviv University's latest War & Peace Index, released Sept. 8, found that 72 percent of Israelis believe the need to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "very urgent or moderately urgent."

And so, as the conflict churns, people get married, have kids, start nesting.

To the Ovadiah, Allon, and Cohen families, the politics of where to live was secondary to space, affordability, and being close to family. Buying homes in the settlement of Kiryat Netafim in the northern West Bank (known in Israel as Samaria) or in Tekoa in the southern West Bank (known as Judea) became a logical decision for them - not a radical one.

Their move to settlements is a choice being made by thousands more Israelis every year.

Netanyahu attributes most of the increase to "natural growth" – an increase due to the high birthrates among existing residents.

Since 2001, Israeli government statistics show that natural growth is the largest driver of population increases. But critics suggest that's a cover for a building boom that is encouraging more Israelis to sink roots in land threatened to be lost to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The head of the Yesha settlers council, Daniel Dayan, says the growth of West Bank Israeli population is due to rapid population increase – couples having large families – and not because of a building boom.

"We don't have enough houses to provide for natural growth," he said in a meeting earlier this month with foreign reporters. This lack of housing, he said, amounted to a "quiet expulsion" of young people who have to leave the settlements because they can't find houses there.

Tekoa settlement

One of the fastest-growing settlements in the West Bank is Tekoa, which in 2008 grew by 11.6 percent. That's even more rapid growth than in the ultra-Orthodox settlements of Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit.

Tekoa, which appears in the Bible, is southeast of Bethlehem and has natural attractions: It sits atop a hill that provides breathtaking views of the desert mountains and, on a clear day, of Jordan. It also has man-made draws: a public swimming pool and an intentional progressive mix of religious and secular families - Israel's main social divide. Its official Orthodox rabbi has an unconventional habit of meeting with local Islamic figures, including members of Hamas.

Until recently, Tekoa was slightly isolated in the midst of Palestinian villages. Settlers driving to Tekoa had a 40-minute drive from Jerusalem that led them through two villages, where Palestinians would often stone their cars. But a new road, opened last year, gets residents to Jerusalem in 15 minutes.

"Sometimes I find myself going into Jerusalem three times a day," says Shelly Allon, an art therapist who grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., and whose well-read American upbringing is evidenced by the copies of The New York Times Book Review lying around the house.

She and her husband, Jeff, an artist, had lived together in Israel for many years before returning to the U.S. to live in Philadelphia for 11 years. They returned to Jerusalem a year ago and discovered that an affordable home there to house them and most of their eight children proved impossible.

So they took the leap, buying a five-bedroom, multistory house for US$210,000 - a quarter of the cost of an equivalent apartment in Jerusalem.

One thing about the rapid growth in Tekoa is surprising. It lies outside the security barrier, or separation wall, that Israel has been building since 2002 to keep suicide bombers out of Israeli cities.

The popular perception is that settlements beyond the wall are more likely to be evacuated in a peace deal, whereas those inside the wall would be annexed. For that reason, buying a home in a settlement would seem to be risky business.

Shlomit and Boaz Cohen, however, say they've hardly given their investment in a five-bedroom home in Tekoa a second thought.

"We've never really talked about it," says Boaz, a counselor at a school in a nearby settlement. "I'm a man of faith. God will decide what he decides."

Shlomit, a research psychologist, has a similar outlook: "It's not that [an evacuation] couldn't happen, but it's not a question that occupies our thoughts."