The Jewish settlements of the eastern part of the Etzion Bloc in the West Bank – unlike the consensual settlements of the western part of the bloc – have not been suffering from an overdose of popularity among Israeli statesmen.

On the map of the permanent status agreement drawn up by negotiating teams in the past, Nokdim, Tekoa, Kfar Elad and Ma’aleh Amos – settlements in which about 3,000 people live – are marked as locations destined to be evacuated. The fact that up until about a year ago the trip from the eastern part of the Etzion Bloc to Jerusalem took about three quarters of an hour, whereas the distance between the western part of the Etzion Bloc and the capital amounts to only a 15-minute trip, only demonstrated the gap between the authorities’ attitude toward settlements like Kfar Etzion or Efrat in the western part of the Etzion Bloc, and the step-children to the east of the route of the separation fence.

Then everything changed, or at least this is the feeling among the inhabitants of the eastern part of the bloc. After long years of struggle, the Za’atra Bypass Road was completed, a fast road 10 kilometers long that connects the settlements of the eastern part of the bloc directly to Har Homa in Jerusalem – itself a controversial and relatively new neighborhood beyond the 1967 border.

The road has whittled the trip to Jerusalem down to 15 minutes, and has changed the atmosphere in those settlements from one extreme to another. In Tekoa and Nokdim, it is now impossible to obtain a room to rent, and the prices of building plots have soared by 70 percent.

Jerusalem’s new suburbs

Over the last few months, 20 new families have joined Kfar Eldad, where some of the houses were empty, and others have been refused because of lack of space. Suddenly the settlements of the eastern Etzion bloc have discovered that they have become suburbs of Jerusalem, like their siblings to the west.

Now this new reality is ostensibly under threat by the possibility that Shadma, an abandoned military base in Area C which overlooks the new road that connects the eastern part of the bloc to Jerusalem, will be transferred to the Palestinians.

Up until 1967, a Jordanian army base was located at Shadma. Then Israel established military bases of its own, but for the past two years the place has been empty and the settlers’ action committees have been waging a fierce battle against the Civil Administration’s plan to hand it over to the Palestinians. The latter want to establish there, by means of the Beit Sahur municipality, a neighborhood with a hospital, an amusement park and perhaps also an industrial zone.

The field echelons of the Israel Defense Forces are also opposed to the plan. They fear that the settlements of the eastern part of the bloc will be cut off again. The road, they stress, is less than one kilometer distance from Shadma, in the range of light arms and machine guns.

The struggle has already changed the reality on the ground, to some extent. Nearly every week inhabitants of Har Homa and the Etzion bloc visit the site. They demonstratively ignore the warning sign "Closed Military Zone" that confronts them; they hold picnics, hikes, heritage tours and Torah lessons there, and about two weeks ago they raised an Israeli flag on the water tower.

The struggle for Shadma has engendered unusual cooperation between a Jerusalem neighborhood committee (that of Har Homa, which is overlooked by Shadma) and action committees on behalf of the settlers, between the settlers’ establishment (the Etzion bloc regional council and its head Shaul Goldstein) and the anti-establishment action committees headed by Nadia Matar of Women in Green and Arieh and Ditya Yitzhak, and between the leaderships of the eastern and western parts of the bloc, which politicians have often sought to divide.

This struggle has put on the map another point of confrontation between the settlers and the anarchist organizations that are also active at Shadma, in an attempt to ensure that the place will be handed over to the Palestinians.

In Hebron, the encounter between the settlers and the anarchists led to open conflict. Here, everything is still hidden beneath the surface, and only the competing graffiti written by one side and then obliterated by the other, time after time, testifies to the potential for a similar uproar.

At the beginning of this month, a meeting of the Committee for a Jewish Shadma was held at the Gush Etzion community youth, sport and culture center. Shaul Goldstein outlined two stages: the first – prevention of the handover of the place to the Palestinians, and the second – the establishment of a Jewish settlement or outpost on the site.

He noted that Jewish settlement in the Etzion Bloc accounts for only 4 percent of the territory. "Shadma," he asserted, "is part of what is most precious to us."

MK Uri Ariel (National Union-National Religious Party) proposed working vis-a-vis the Defense Ministry, the Central Command and the Shin Bet security service to ensure that they will oppose "the destructive ideas of the Civil Administration."

Har Etzion Yeshiva head Rabbi Yaakov Madan spoke about "daily action, with all our might, in order to succeed in the struggle for the eastern road, which is a struggle for settlement contiguity between Har Homa and the Etzion Bloc."

A distant past

The struggle for Shadma has already engendered the first stirrings of a political lobby, and also a reminder from the distant past: Close to the abandoned military camp, at a place called Beit Betza, traces of the Greek siege on the Hashmoneans have been found. This is where Yehonatan, Shimon and Yohanan fled after the battle in which their brother, Judah Maccabee, was killed.

However, despite the historical connection, the settlers are more interested in the present. Arutz Sheva, the settlers’ pirate radio station, reported dramatically a few days ago that "the Israeli flag that was hung on the tall water tower in Shadma is visible from afar, and declares proudly that the place will not be abandoned to the Arab enemy."

The flag is the sign. Shadma is one of the stops on the trans-outpost trip that the outpost youth are holding this week. A happening and a bike ride are planned for the site, and on Wednesday, a marathon of lectures in preparation for the Ninth of Av: from destruction to redemption. 

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