GUSH ETZION (ETZION BLOC)
Gush Etzion is a tract of denuded hills only 13 km. north of Hebron. It
comprises Kfar Etzion, Migdal Oz and Rosh Zurim (which breed turkeys, produce
candles and metal parts, and grow carnations), Moshav Elazar and the rural
centre of Alon Shvut with its Har Etzion Yeshiva and apartments for young
people who live here but work in Jerusalem and other nearby places. There is
also a museum and a Field School in Kfar Etzion. No entrance on Shabbat. The
first Jewish settlement here in modern times opened in 1927 when Orthodox
Ashkenazi and Yemenite Jews set up an agricultural unit called Migdal Eder. But
they disbanded after the slaughter of Jews in Hebron in 1929.
A second attempt at Jewish settlement was made by Shmuel Holtzman, a
citrus grower from Rehovot, who started a settlement in 1935 and called it Kfar
Etzion. But the crops and properties were destroyed by Arabs in 1937. In 1943
some young members of Hapoel Hamizrahi returned to the area, planted orchards
and crops, introduced light industry and built a synagogue. Other kibbutzim
were established nearby. In May 1948, after months of siege, during which they
suffered casualties, the defenders could no longer withstand the numerically
superior forces of the Arab Legion. Their end came a day before Independence
was proclaimed in Israel.
The Arabs massacred the 127 defenders, raising the total number of dead
at Gush Etzion to 240, and then set about uprooting the trees. The defenders
and those who died trying to lift the siege showed incredible valour.
There were the 14 Jews who blew themselves up in their armoured car when
they saw no possibility of escape from swarms of Arabs attacking them on their
return from Kfar Etzion to Jerusalem. Then there were the famous 35, killed to
a man while on their way through the Valley of Elah to lift the siege (see
Route No. 6).
Finally there were the 20 women and youngsters entombed in the cellars
of a building dynamited during the final battle. Their bodies were recovered
and reinterred when Israeli troops recaptured Gush Etzion in 1967.
Those who survived the 1948 massacre founded Kibbutz Nir Etzion near
Haifa, Kibbutz Ein Tzurim in the south, Beerot Yitzhak and a new Massuot
Yitzhak in the heart of the country. Kibbutz Revadim, just off the
Jerusalem-Beer Sheva road, was also in the pre-1948 Etzion Bloc. With the end
of the Six Day War many of the survivors, together with the children who had
been evacuated from Kfar Etzion, returned to rebuild the Etzion Bloc. A new
town named Efrat is located on the eastern side of the Etzion Bloc across the
main road, and further east, in the Judaean Desert, are the settlements of
Tekoa and Ma'ale Amos.