by Haggai Huberman, translated by Hillel Fendel.
It was 25 years ago, in May 1999, when I interviewed the late Shilo Gal for the now-defunct HaTzofeh newspaper of the Mizrachi movement. Gal was then completing 20 years as the first head – mayor, essentially – of the Gush Etzion Regional Council.
I asked him what accomplishment he was most proud of during his term as the founding head of Gush Etzion. He answered firmly: "I am proudest of having formed a wall of Jewish settlements between Gush Etzion and Jerusalem, which blocks a Palestinian spread and push westward to the Green Line [as the former border between Israel and Jordan was then known]."
If that's what he thought then, when the "wall" was quite sparse, we can just imagine what he would say now!
Shilo Gal came into the world in 1948. He would have been born in pre-State Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, but the women and children had been evacuated to safety some weeks before; Shilo's father remained there and was killed when the Jordanians captured the area. This occurred the day before the State of Israel's independence was declared, when Shilo was two months old.
In September 1967, Shilo was among the group that re-established, with governmental permission, Kibbutz Kfar Etzion on its 19-year-old ruins. Chanan Porat, who led the initiative, met with then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to obtain his authorization. He told me years later that Eshkol hinted that the few small communities he was willing to authorize then would soon grow much bigger… "Eshkol went over to the large map on the wall and placed his hand over the entire Mt. Hevron area," Porat continued, "and said, 'Let's see, Gush Etzion is here? OK, we'll say that we just expanded Jerusalem a little…'"
That's how it was in the days when the Labor Party was more right-wing and nationalist than today's Likud party.
Nearly 57 years have passed since then, during which Gush Etzion has grown many times over and has seen four successors to Shilo Gal. Two weeks ago, the government approved official community status for five outposts in different areas of Judea and Samaria: Evyatar on the trans-Shomron highway, Sde Efrayim in western Binyamin, Adurayim in the Mt. Hevron area, Givat Assaf near Beit El, and N'vei Ori (Cheletz) in northern Gush Etzion. The location of each one of them has critical strategic importance.
IDF Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, who completed his stint this week as Commander of the Central Region, riled up not a few people, including myself, with his parting speech sharply criticizing the outpost settlers. On his way to what appears to be his new career as another left-wing former army general commentator, he seemed to identify in his speech less with the Jewish residents and more with the Arab population.
However, it must be said that just a few hours before his uncalled-for speech, he signed a document of great value and importance for the settlement enterprise: an order that includes the area of the N'vei Ori farm in the Gush Etzion Regional Council. This paves the way for the next step in the planning process: the preparation of the taba, or "town building program." In general, the addition of five new Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is good news for the nationalist sector and the State of Israel.
N'vei Ori was established a few months after the despicable terrorist murder in 2019 of 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher, a National Service volunteer from Tekoa. The farm is located just a few kilometers away from the site of the murder, on a ridge above the Heletz Brook. Particularly significant is the fact that it actually connects Gush Etzion to Jerusalem – a fulfillment of Levi Eshkol's joke-come-true about "expanding Jerusalem a little."
As Gush Etzion Council head Yaron Rosental wrote last week, "The decision to recognize N'vei Ori as a new Jewish community in the Heletz area is exciting and important for two reasons: 1) Another Jewish point of settlement in Gush Etzion! And 2), it completes the link between Gush Etzion and Yerushalayim, totally and absolutely!"
Rosental illustrated this second point most concretely:
"One who walks northward from the Lone Oak Tree [a remnant of the original Gush Etzion bloc, and now a tourist site featuring a three-dimensional topographic model of the entire Gush Etzion] just outside Alon Shvut will encounter the following milestones and communities:
After 50 meters he will hit upon Alon Shvut.
A half-kilometer further up he will reach the Netiv HaAvot neighborhood of Elazar.
800 meters (a half-mile) later – N'vei Daniel.
One kilometer further north – Sde Boaz.
Two kilometers from there – the new N'vei Ori farm.
Another kilometer later, he will arrive in Har Gilo.
Another few hundred meters and he is in Jerusalem!
"In the 70's [Rosental continued], after the founding of the first communities in Gush Etzion, no one believed that we could actually be connected to Jerusalem. This is why [in accordance with Moshe Dayan's original plan], Route 367 was "broken through" towards the Elah Valley in the west, so as to connect the Gush with western Israel and not Jerusalem.
"I recall that when I finished the army, I used to walk from Har Gilo to Kfar Etzion on Fridays. The first part of the hike was simply beautiful, but the truth is that it was a bit unpleasant, because there was no Jewish presence all the way up until N'vei Daniel. But now – we have done it! Jewish communities fill the land all the way up to Yerushalayim!
"I write these words with tears of excitement and emotion in my eyes at the privilege granted me to take part in this process. I believe with all my heart that the defenders of the Gush in 1948 are looking down at us now from above and singing the traditional pioneers' song, 'Shuru, habitu, ur'u – look around and take note how great is this day!'"
Rosental then thanked Prime Minister Netanyahu, Minister Smotrich, former Gush Regional Council Head Shlomo Ne'eman, and the Tal family who have lived in the farm for several years.
When the first Kfar Etzion pioneers moved in, they were 15 young men and women, and though hundreds of people joined in the initial ground-breaking celebration, by nightfall they barely had a minyan [ten men]. Today, however, the 22 (!) communities of Gush Etzion number 28,000 residents (!) – not including the 68,000 in the hareidi city of Beitar Illit or the 12,000 in Efrat. That comes out to well over 100,000 residents between Gush Etzion and Jerusalem. May they increase again and again!