Gush Etzion (, 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 dates back to the 1927 establishment of Migdal Eder, which was depopulated and destroyed after the 1929 Palestine riots; it includes four Jewish agricultural villages that were founded in 1943–1947 and depopulated and destroyed by the Arab Legion during the 1948 Palestine war, after the Kfar Etzion massacre on May 13, 1948, and the subsequent surrender of the other three communities.Between Jerusalem and Hebron: Jewish Settlement in the Pre-State Period, Yossi Katz, Bar Ilan University Press, pp. 8, 265. 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. , Gush Etzion consisted of 22 settlements with a population of 70,000.West Bank settlers shrug off Obama call Khaleej Times
The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but Israel disagrees.
History
The four core original communities of Gush Etzion were Kfar Etzion (founded in 1943), Massu'ot Yitzhak (1945), Ein Tzurim (1946) and Revadim (1947). The four Jewish communities were built on land acquired from 1920 to 1930.Benzaquen, John. "Building blocs", The Jerusalem Post, October 14, 2011. Accessed June 16, 2026. 'Gush Etzion (the Etzion Bloc) is one of the most famous names in modern Israeli history. The core of the bloc is made up of four agricultural settlements founded in the early 1940s on land purchased piecemeal between 1920 and 1930: Kfar Etzion, Massuot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim and Revadim." The land of all four communities had been on Jewish-owned property purchased decades earlier and located in 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 with the International Red Cross and British officials acting as mediators.Morris, Benny. "Before the Kidnappings, There Was a Massacre", Tablet, June 25, 2014. Accessed June 16, 2026. "Following the fall of Kfar Etzion, the three other settlements, with British and Red Cross officials mediating, on May 13-14 surrendered to the Legion, their defenders going off to a yearlong captivity in a Jordanian POW camp in Zarqa. The settlements were looted and razed. Glubb quite accurately pointed out that the 350 Jewish survivors of the battle, almost all from Revadim, Ein Tzurim, and Massu’ot Yitzhak, were well-treated in the Jordanian POW camp in Zarqa—though, upon returning to Israel the following year, they complained of the boredom and heat." The homes were plundered and burned; the 350 inhabitants were taken by Arab troops and kept for months in a Jordanian prisoner-of-war camp in Zarqa.Between Jerusalem and Hebron: Jewish Settlement in the Pre-State Period, Yossi Katz, Bar Ilan University Press, p. 273. In the aftermath of the destruction, a 700-year-old tree known as the "lone oak" that had been located among the four kibbutzes was one of the few items left standing.Bar-Am, Aviva; and Bar-Am, Shmuel. "In the Etzion Bloc, source of Jerusalem’s water, and defense", The Times of Israel, April 23, 2016. Accessed June 19, 2026. "From here we took the main road to a 700-year-old kermes oak just outside of Alon Shvut. Known as the Lone Oak, the tree stood at the center of the Bloc’s four little pre-State kibbutzim until, on May 12, 1948, Kfar Etzion fell to the Arab Legion and almost every defender was brutally massacred. The three other settlements quickly surrendered and their defenders were taken prisoner. After all four communities were razed by the Arabs, only the Lone Oak was left standing."
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.
Settlements in Mandatory Palestine
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 on the rocky soil, difficult weather conditions and escalating tension with neighboring Arab communities. Two years later, during the 1929 Palestine riots and recurring hostilities, Migdal Eder was attacked and destroyed.Halickman, Sharona Margolin. "Where is Migdal Eder?", The Times of Israel, November 29, 2025. Accessed June 22, 2026. "In 1927, during the British mandate, the Yishuv of Migdal Eder was established by residents of Mea Shearim and its first inhabitants were Yemenite Jews from Tel Aviv. A company called Zichron David (in memory of Rabbi David of Kotzk) was set up by Yitchak Greenwald to manage the religious settlement whose purpose was to buy land and promote agriculture near Jerusalem hoping that this would hasten the redemption and the coming of the Mashiach.... During the riots of 1929, neighboring Arabs planned an attack. Everyone who was left on the Yishuv was evacuated before the Yishuv was burned down." 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. Most of the structures built by Holtzman and his associates were destroyed by local Arab residents.
The Jewish National Fund organized a third attempt at settlement in 1943 with the re-establishment 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. Though the bloc fell within the area allotted to a proposed Arab state, the Haganah command decided not to leave, though efforts to keep the communities under Jewish control became increasingly fraught as convoys of defenders and supplies were unable to reach the bloc.Kadish, Alon; Sela, Avraham; The War of 1948; Representations of Israeli and Palestinian Memories and Narratives, p. 124. Indiana University Press, 2016. . Accessed July 17, 2026. "According to the 1947 UN Partition Resolution on Palestine, Gush Etzion was not to be included in the Jewish state. The hostilities between Arabs and Jews that erupted on the day following the Resolution put Gush Etzion under effective siege, and the military clashes between its residents and the surrounding Arab population continued until the Bloc’s final fall in mid-May 1948. The Haganah Command of Jerusalem made repeated efforts to help the besieged Bloc by sending combatants and arms, but Gush Etzion’s situation kept deteriorating. The reinforcements were insufficient or failed to break through the Arab siege." 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 from Hartuv to Gush Etzion under cover of darkness on January 15-16 was discovered; in the ensuing battle, all members of the Convoy of 35 were massacred.Kalev, Gol. "Aborting was not an option; Remembering the Lamed-Heh on the 70th anniversary of the battle that killed 35 fighters trying to save Gush Etzion during the War of Independence", The Jerusalem Post, January 18, 2018. Accessed June 22, 2026. "The next evening, on Thursday, January 15, a group of 40 students on a botanical research expedition drove from Jerusalem to the village of Hartuv, near today’s Beit Shemesh.... Danny Mass, the mission commander, argued back that by daybreak they would be close enough to Gush Etzion and if compromised, they would be able to fight their way into the Gush.... Mass eventually decided to send him back, accompanied by two other soldiers. The original group of 40 was now down by five and will forever be known as the Lamed-Heh ('35' in Hebrew letters)." Despite some resupply flights by Piper Cubs out of Tel Aviv, landing onto an improvised airfield, adequate supplies were not getting in.
On March 27, land communication with the Yishuv was severed completely when the Nabi Daniel Convoy was ambushed and 13 fighters were killed on its return journey 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.
Gush Etzion massacre