Local councils (Hebrew: מועצה מקומית‎, Mo'atza Mekomit) are one of the three types of local government found in Israel, with the other two being cities and regional councils. As of 2003, there were 144 local councils in Israel, these being settlements which pass a minimum threshold enough to justify their operations as independent municipal units, although not large enough to be declared a city. In general this applies to all settlements of over 2,000 people, apart from extreme cases where kibbutzes exceed this number.