Gush Etzion

Gush Etzion (Hebrew: גּוּשׁ עֶצְיוֹן, lit. Etzion Bloc) is a cluster of Israeli settlements located in the Judaean Mountains, directly south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the West Bank. The core group includes four Jewish agricultural villages that were founded in 1943–1947, and destroyed by the Arab Legion on May 13, 1948 in the 1948 Palestine war, in the Kfar Etzion massacre. The area was left outside of Israel with 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. As of 2011^[update], Gush Etzion consisted of 22 settlements with a population of 70,000.

The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but Israel disagrees.

The four core original settlements of Gush Etzion were Kfar Etzion (founded in 1943), Massu'ot Yitzhak (1945), Ein Tzurim (1946) and Revadim (1947); the land area of all four were located within the village boundaries of Khirbet Beit Zakariyyah. From November 29, 1947, Kfar Etzion was under siege and cut off from Jerusalem. On May 13, 1948, when the village surrendered, 127 Jewish inhabitants were massacred by local village irregulars, with the possible involvement of 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 have been described as "one of the major episodes of the State of Israel-in-the-making", playing a significant role in Israeli collective memory. The motivation for resettling the region is not so much ideological, political or security-related as symbolic, linked in the Israeli psyche to the massive loss of life (1% of its total population) in the 1947–1949 Palestine war.

In 1927, a group of religious Yemenite Jews founded an agricultural village they named Migdal Eder (Hebrew: מִגְדַּל עֵדֶר), based on a biblical quotation (Genesis 35:21). 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, during the 1929 Palestine riots and recurring hostilities, Migdal Eder was attacked and destroyed. Residents of the neighboring Palestinian village of Beit Ummar sheltered the farmers, but they could not return to their land.

In 1932, a Jewish businessman of German extraction, Shmuel Zvi Holtzmann, provided financial backing for another attempt at resettling 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 Holz means "wood", which is etz עץ 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 20,000 dunams (20 km²).

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 leave 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 and 10 convoy members were killed. For 47 days the armed conflict was intense. In January, the women and children were evacuated to Ratisbonne Monastery with British assistance. An emergency reinforcement convoy put together by the Haganah and attempting to get to Gush Etzion under cover of darkness was discovered; all 35 members were massacred. Despite some resupply flights by Piper Cubs out of Tel Aviv landing onto an improvised airfield, adequate supplies were not getting in.