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Tzur Shalem

Gush Etzion Regional CouncilIsraeli outpostsIsraeli settlements in the West BankPopulated places established in 2001Unauthorized Israeli settlements

Tzur Shalem is an Israeli outpost attached to the Israeli settlement of Karmei Tzur in The Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank. The outpost is under the jurisdiction of the Gush Etzion Regional Council. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.Tzur Shalem was founded in March 2001 in memory of Shmuel Gillis, a senior hematologist at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem who lived in Karmei Tzur. Dr. Gillis was killed by Palestinians earlier in 2001.The outpost, which is just 100 metres (330 ft) from its parent community of Karmei Tzur, started with 6 caravans. By the summer of 2004 it had grown to 22 caravans.In June 2002 Palestinians killed Eyal and Yael Sorek and army reservist Shalom Mordechai in Tzur Shalem. The attack called the legitimacy of outposts in general into question in Israel. Avraham Rotem, a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said that a settlement of even five families would require 60 to 80 soldiers along with a vast amount of infrastructure in order to defend it. Rotem claimed that "[a]nything can be defended. But the question is if it is smart, and whether the IDF needs this on its head, and the answer to that question is no. These tiny settlements are an albatross on the neck of the IDF."

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Tzur Shalem (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Tzur Shalem
Derekh Sorek,

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N 31.6061577 ° E 35.0961215 °
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דרך שורק

Derekh Sorek

Judea and Samaria, Palestinian Territories
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Kfar Etzion massacre
Kfar Etzion massacre

The Kfar Etzion massacre refers to a massacre of Jews that took place after a two-day battle in which Jewish Kibbutz residents and Haganah militia defended Kfar Etzion from a combined force of the Arab Legion and local Arab men on May 13, 1948, the day before the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Of the 127 Haganah fighters and Jewish kibbutzniks who died during the defence of the settlement, Martin Gilbert states that fifteen were killed on surrendering.Controversy surrounds the responsibility and role of the Arab Legion in the killing of those who surrendered. The official Israeli version maintains that the kibbutz residents and Haganah soldiers were massacred by local Arabs and the Arab Legion of the Jordanian Army as they were surrendering. The Arab Legion version maintains that the Legion arrived too late to prevent the kibbutz attack by men from nearby Arab villages, which was allegedly motivated by a desire to avenge the massacre of Deir Yassin and the destruction of one of their villages several months earlier. The surrendering Jewish residents and fighters are said to have been assembled in a courtyard, only to be suddenly fired upon; it is said that many died on the spot, while most of those who managed to flee were hunted down and killed.Four prisoners survived the massacre and were transferred to Transjordan. Immediately following the surrender on May 13, the kibbutz was looted and razed to the ground. The members of the three other kibbutzim of the Gush Etzion surrendered the next day and were taken as POWs to Jordan. The bodies of the victims were left unburied until, one and a half years later, the Jordanian government allowed Shlomo Goren to collect the remains, which were then interred at Mount Herzl. The survivors of the Etzion Bloc were housed in former Arab houses in Jaffa.