Gush Etzion (, ''lit.'' Etzion Bloc) is a cluster of Israeli settlements located in the Judaean Mountains directly south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The core group includes four agricultural villages that were founded in 1940-1947 on property purchased in the 1920s and 1930s, and destroyed before the outbreak of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The area was left outside the 1949 armistice lines. These settlements were rebuilt after the 1967 Six-Day War, along with new communities that have expanded the area of the Etzion Bloc. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this. In 2011, Gush Etzion consists of 22 settlements with a population of 70,000.

History

The core settlements of Gush Etzion before 1948 were Kfar Etzion, Massu'ot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim and Revadim, built on tracts of land purchased from the early 1920s. From November 29, 1947, Kfar Etzion was under siege and cut off from Jerusalem. On May 13, 1948, when the village surrendered, 127 inhabitants were massacred by the Arab Legion. The other villages surrendered the next day. The inhabitants were taken prisoner and the homes were plundered and burned.

The establishment, defense and fall of Gush Etzion has been described as "one of the major episodes of the State of Israel-in-the-making," playing a significant role in Israeli collective memory.

Pre-state settlements

In 1927, a group of religious Yemenite Jews founded an agricultural village they named Migdal Eder (), based on a biblical quotation (). The land had been purchased in 1925 by Zikhron David, a private Jewish land holding company at a site between Bethlehem and Hebron that fell between the zones of influence of the local Arab clans. This early community did not flourish, mainly due to economic hardships and escalating tension with neighboring Arab communities. Two years later, the 1929 Palestine riots and recurring hostilities forced the group to flee. The inhabitants of Migdal Eder were saved by the villagers of the neighboring Arab village of Beit Umar but were not able to return to the land they left behind.In course of the 1929 Palestine riots, Migdal Eder was attacked and destroyed. Residents of the neighboring Arab village of Beit Umar sheltered the farmers, but they could not return to their land.

In 1932 ,a Jewish businessman Shmuel Yosef Holtzmann, provided financial backing for another attempt at settling the area, through a company named El HaHar ("To the Mountain"). The kibbutz established there in 1935 was named Kfar Etzion, in his honor (the German word “holtz” means “wood”, which is “etz” in Hebrew). The 1936–1939 Arab revolt made life intolerable for the residents, who returned to Jerusalem in 1937. The Jewish National Fund organized a third attempt at settlement in 1943 with the refounding of Kfar Etzion by members of a religious group called ''Kvutzat Avraham''. Despite the rocky soil, shortage of potable water, harsh winters, and constant threat of attack, this group managed to succeed.

Their isolation was somewhat relieved by the establishment in 1945 of Masu'ot Yitzhak and Ein Tzurim, populated by members of the religious Bnei Akiva movement and Religious Kibbutz Movement. Against the backdrop of an impending struggle for Israeli independence, the secular Hashomer Hatzair movement founded a fourth kibbutz, Revadim. A religious center, Neve Ovadia, was also founded by the bloc's members. By the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Etzion bloc numbered 450 residents and stretched over an area of .

Civil war and Arab-Israeli War

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations approved the Partition Plan. The bloc fell within the area allotted to a proposed Arab state. The Haganah command decided not to evacuate the bloc. Arab hostilities began almost immediately, and travel to Jerusalem became exceedingly difficult. For five months the bloc was besieged, first by Arab irregulars, and then by the Jordanian Arab Legion. Throughout the winter hostilities intensified and several relief convoys from the Haganah in Jerusalem were destroyed in ambushes. For 47 days the armed conflict was intense. In January, the women and children were evacuated with British assistance. An emergency reinforcement convoy attempting to march to Gush Etzion under cover of darkness were discovered and killed. Despite some resupply flights by Piper Cubs out of Tel Aviv onto an improvised airfield, adequate supplies were not getting in.

On March 27, land communication with the Yishuv was severed completely when the Neve Daniel Convoy was forced to retreat back to Jerusalem. In the following months, Arab irregular forces continued small-scale attacks against the bloc, which the Haganah was able to effectively withstand. At times, the Haganah forces, commanded by Uzi Narkiss, ambushed Arab military convoys, (and, according to Morris also Arab civilian traffic and British military convoys) on the road between Jerusalem and Hebron. The defenders of Gush Etzion and the central command in Jerusalem mulled evacuation, but although they had very few arms, a decision was made to hold out due to their strategic location as the only Jewish-held position on Jerusalem's southern approach from Hebron.

On May 12, the commander of Kfar Etzion requested from the Central Command in Jerusalem a permission to evacuate the kibbutz, but was told to stay. Later in the day, the Arabs captured the Russian Orthodox monastery, which the Haganah used as a perimeter fortress for the Kfar Etzion area, killing twenty-four of its thirty-two defenders. On May 13, a massive attack involving parts of two Arab Legion infantry companies, light artillery and local irregular support commenced from four directions. The kibbutz fell within a day, and the Arab forces massacred the entire population of Kfar Etzion, soldiers and civilians alike, the total number of killed during the final assault, following massacre and suicide was between 75 to 250. Only three men and one woman survived. The following day, the three other kibbutzim surrendered, on the day of the declaration of independence. The prisoners were taken as POWs by the Arab Legion and held in Jordan for a year before being released.

Interim period (1949–1967)

The women and children who had been evacuated from the bloc before the battle were moved to Petah Tikva. Some 135 were eventually resettled in a neighborhood called Jebaliya in southern Jaffa, later renamed to Giv'at Aliyah by the residents, who organized it like a kibbutz. Four years after Giv'at Aliyah was founded, the returning POWs of the bloc founded Nir Etzion in the Mount Carmel area near Haifa. Nir Etzion sought to accept the bulk of the bloc's children into it, but despite wishing to unite in a new place of residence, the issue of joining Nir Etzion was a matter of debate among the children, many of whom joined the Nahal military unit. The survivors of Masu'ot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim, and Revadim founded their communities anew in Israel proper.

The interim period saw the rise of two movements designed to commemorate the fall of Gush Etzion, through songs, poetry, prose and cultural activities. During the Jordanian rule of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1949–1967, all the buildings were destroyed and the thousands of trees planted in Gush Etzion were uprooted, save a very old one known as the "lone oak" or "lone tree". Both the land of the bloc, and the events that transpired there in the war of 1948, became sacred to the descendants of the original participants. Some compared the story of the yearning to return to the bloc to the story of the Jews yearning to return to the Land of Israel. For 19 years, some survivors would gather on the Israel–Jordan frontier and gaze at the tree in remembrance of what was. This was also done after each annual Independence Day ceremony. Poems and stories were written that humanized the lone tree. However, this trend was criticized by the novelist Haim Be'er, who called the bloc's settlement movements a "fervent cult" and compared them to the Canaanites.

Re-establishment

As a result of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel controlled the area of the former Etzion Bloc. A loose organisation of Bnei Akiva activists, who later coalesced into Gush Emunim, led by Hanan Porat, whose parents had been evacuated, petitioned Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to allow the reestablishment of Kfar Etzion. Among the supporters were Ra'anan Weitz, head of the settlement department in the Jewish Agency, Minister of Internal Affairs Haim-Moshe Shapira, and Michael Hazani of the national religious movement. Supporters of the Allon Plan in the government were also in favor of settling the bloc. This caused Eshkol to finally give a green light to the plan. He was not decisive however, and the settlement movement did not immediately being to build in the entire bloc, but only on the location of Kfar Etzion. Construction began in September 1967. According to Ra'anan Weitz's plan, Kfar Etzion was meant to be one of three settlements in the new bloc, from it to Aviezer. The middle village would be established on Jewish National Fund land purchased in the 1940s.

Weitz's plan of creating a line of settlements based on territorial continuity, however, had a number of opponents: the descendants of the original residents of the bloc and the settlers on the ground, the Religious Kibbutz Movement, and the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF surveyed the land and stated that "Kfar Etzion B should be founded near the existing Kfar Etzion, and not near the former Green Line". This eventually found the support of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who envisioned five settlement points in the West Bank, one of them being the Etzion bloc. On September 30, 1968, the government gave permission to create a regional center and Hesder Yeshiva in Kfar Etzion, a major demand of the settlers and the final departure from the continuity plan.

In the same decision, the government appointed a committee for planning the settlement of the bloc. In accordance with the committee's recommendations, the settlement of Rosh Tzurim was founded on the former site of Ein Tzurim and Revadim in July 1969, and Alon Shvut in June 1970. Many other settlements and two municipalities (Efrat and Beitar Illit) have been founded in the area of historic Etzion bloc, and its name was taken for the greater Gush Etzion Regional Council.

Today there is a museum about the history of Gush Etzion.

Today

The following is a list of communities in modern Gush Etzion.

!Name!!Founded!!Population(EOY 2008)!!Type
Alon Shvut	1970	3,400
Bat Ayin	1989	900
Beitar Illit	1985	38,800	Independent municipality
Efrat	1983	8,300	Independent municipality
	1975	1,706
Karmei Tzur	1984	700
Kedar	1984	960
Kfar Eldad	1994	120
Kfar Etzion	1967	820	Kibbutz
Gva'ot	1984	75
Har Gilo	1968	570
Ibei HaNahal	1999	50	Outpost
Ma'ale Amos	1982	270
Ma'ale Rehav'am	2001	40
Metzad	1984	380
Migdal Oz	1977	440	Kibbutz
Neve Daniel	1982	1,883
Nokdim	1982	1300
Pnei Kedem	2000	100
Rosh Tzurim	1969	560	Kibbutz
Sde Boaz	2002	90
Tekoa, Gush Etzion	1975	1600

Gush Etzion Junction

The entrance to the Gush Etzion bloc is the Gush Etzion Junction, which is located just west of the intersection of Route 60 and Route 367. The junction is located between Efrat and Alon Shvut and very close to Migdal Oz. It is the site of the Gush Etzion visitors' center, a gas station, an automotive repair shop, a Rami Levi discount supermarket, an electronics store, the Gush Etzion Winery, and the restaurant Gavna. The junction is a popular hitchhiking post which has frequently been the site of attacks by Palestinians against Israeli citizens.

See also

Gush Etzion Convoy

Convoy of 35

Kfar Etzion massacre

Gush Etzion Regional Council

References

Bibliography

External links

Gush Etzion home page.

Kibbutz Kfar Etzion home page.

Gush Etzion Remembered: History of Gush Ezion and the Kfar Etzion Massacre

Category:1948 Arab–Israeli War Category:Israeli settlements * Category:History of Israel Category:Jewish villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War

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