Gush Etzion

Gush Etzion (the settlement block of Etzion) is an Israeli settlement outside of the Green Line, the 1949 Armistice Line between Israel and its neighbors after the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. Israeli settlements outside of the Green Line is a contested issue in the Israeli-Palestine Conflict namely within immediate proximately to the Palestinian Territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Gush Etzion is within in the West Bank located equidistance between two cities of biblical importance – Bethlehem (birthplace of Jesus) and Hebron (the burial place of the “Patriarchs” – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob). There is an ancient Roman road passing through this settlement that was the alleged route of Abraham when he traveled from Hebron to Jerusalem. Along this road, called the Road of the Patriarchs, there are archeological remnants of mika’vot, baths for ritual purification, for this route was commonly used for the semi-annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the period of the Second Temple, 516 BC to 70 AD. As a southern approach to Jerusalem, during the Israeli War of Independence, it was part of a noted and prolonged siege by Jordanian Arab Legion and Arab irregular forces. One day prior to the end of the war, as a result of an overwhelming, coordinated attack, the settlement fell and all of its soldiers and the citizens were massacred.

A settlement block is partition into small units, like a neighborhood within a city. But, unlike a city, these neighborhoods, although with visual proximity, are physically isolated from one another. My classmates and I visited one of our professors at one of the settlements within Gush Etzion. It was not unlike a pioneering gated community in the Midwest – an outpost of uniformly designed townhouses, shops, and synagogues spun into a compact suburb. It truly had the appearance and the trappings of an American suburb. To make a finer point, although this settlement is outside of the Green Line, it is a permanent settlement in existence for at least the past thirty years. This is not a temporarily settlement that is often the reported point of strife within the Israeli-Palestine Conflict.

Israel can be defined as covenantal (the “Promised land”), sociological (the totality of the Jewish people), and experiential (the Jewish homeland). As I travel and studying in Israel, I am beginning to learn the necessary and the value of this land.