[6] Since November 2008, Oded Revivi, an attorney and lieutenant colonel in the army and member of the Likud Central Committee, is the head of Efrat regional council.

[citation needed] Like all Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, Efrat is considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Archaeological excavations revealed an ancient Jewish cemetery consisting of a tumulus built over a platform structure and more than twenty Bronze Age burial caves of the shaft tomb type, many of which had been reused over long stretches of time.

[13] Although traditionally considered one of the more politically moderate settlements, in the Knesset elections of November 2022 almost half the residents voted for the far-right Religious Zionist Party.

A farm is to be established on the land as a placeholder until a plan to build 2,500 homes on the site can be carried out, which would double the size of the settlement.

According to Haaretz, “it can be expected that the establishment of the farm will be followed by the building of an access road and the deployment of IDF soldiers and other security arrangements, to guarantee the area's future role as part of Efrat”.

[20] In December 2011, it was reported that the IDF has also agreed to the expansion of Efrat and the Gush Etzion bloc with 40 single-family homes toward the north and north-east on “Givat Hadagan”, replacing the unauthorized trailer park of the campus of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak on the site.

“Givat Hadagan”, originally planned as a neighborhood of 500 homes in the 1990s, is located a few hundred meters from the Dheisheh refugee camp and from the Palestinian town of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem.

Earlier, the construction of 277 homes on a third hill in Efrat, called “Givat Hazayit”, had been approved as a reaction to the UNESCO's accepting Palestine as a full member.