page_title: Gush Etzion
section_title: Re-establishment
hierarchical_section_title: Gush Etzion / History / Re-establishment
caption_attribution_description: English: The Gush Etzion winery near Alon Shvut עברית: יקב ביישוב אלון שבות שבגוש עציון צילום:he:משתמש:מיכאלי 09:46, 11 באוקטובר 2006 (IST)
context_page_description: Gush Etzion is a cluster of Jewish 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 1940–1947 on property purchased in the 1920s and 1930s, and destroyed by the Arab Legion before the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli 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, 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 the Israeli and US governments dispute this.
context_section_description: 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. Eshkol was finally persuaded to give a green light to the plan. He was not decisive however, and the settlement movement did not immediately begin to build in the entire bloc, but only on the location of Kfar Etzion. Construction began in September, 1967. Since the government initially decided not to establish civilian settlements in the captured territories, the settlement was falsely portrayed as a Nahal outpost. According to Ra'anan Weitz's plan, Kfar Etzion was meant to be one of three settlements in the new bloc, which also included Aviezer. A new middle village would be established on Jewish National Fund land purchased in the 1940s.
  Weitz' 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, the settlers on the ground, the Religious Kibbutz Movement, and the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF surveyed the land and decided that, "Kfar Etzion B should be founded near the existing Kfar Etzion, and not near the former Green Line". This eventually was supported by 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, Revadim and the settlement of Rosh Tzurim were founded on the former site of Ein Tzurim 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 the 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.
caption: Alon Shvut winery
exif: {"Image Make": "Hewlett-Packard", "Image Model": "HP PhotoSmart C945 (V01.74)", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2006:10:10 09:16:32", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "456", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5482", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8903", "EXIF ExposureTime": "117/50000", "EXIF FNumber": "81/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF OECF": "[0, 2, 0, 129, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 8, 0, 0, 0, 16, 0, 0, 0, 24, 0, 0, ... ]", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:10:10 09:16:32", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:10:10 09:16:32", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "48515049", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "559/64", "EXIF ApertureValue": "1561/256", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "2517/256", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "14/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "D55", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "224/25", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0010", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2608", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1952", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[0, 0, 0, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "4734", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "111/4000000", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "111/4000000", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "100", "EXIF SensingMethod": "Not defined", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "44", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF DeviceSettingDescription": "[0, 1, 0, 15, 32, 32, 32, 48, 65, 48, 32, 32, 32, 55, 65, 48, 32, 32, 32, 52, ... ]", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "2"}