On Friday evening, an 18 year old Arab from the village of Idhna (near Hebron) was caught infiltrating into the town of Efrat in Gush Etzion.

When he was caught by the town’s security personnel, he was carrying a Hamas flag and 3 lighters on his person.

During the interrogation he said he planned to commit a terror attack. There is speculation he was sent to test out the town’s security response.

On Saturday, the IDF arrested two Arabs in Hebron who threw stones at a Jewish boy, in Hebron’s Jewish Quarter.

“I don’t know if there was any company in the Israel Defense Forces or in any army in the world that assembled such splendid manpower, pure bravery, and spiritual abundance as this company, who will forever be known by our people as the “lamed hey” (the thirty-five)…These lions of Israel were a mix of youthful spirit and glory, superior wisdom…and bravery fiercer than death.”
–David Ben Gurion

65 years ago this week, 35 young Haganah soldiers – mostly students at the Hebrew University – set out from Jerusalem to bring much needed supplies to the kibbutzim in the besieged Etzion Bloc south of the city. The soldiers were ambushed en route, and, despite fighting valiantly, the entire company was killed prior to reaching their destination. Toldot Yisrael’s latest movie A Bravery Fiercer than Death: The 35 Heroes of Gush Etzion tells their tragic yet inspiring story.

This is the fourth installment in the “Eyewitness 1948″ short film series produced by Toldot Yisrael and was generously sponsored by the Alexander Family in memory of Shaul Pnueli, one of the fallen. The first three films in the series, Echoes of a Shofar, The Story of a Vote, and The Volunteers were made possible through the support of the Jim Joseph Foundation and others and have been viewed online over 450,000 times since the series launch in September 2010! A companion teachers guide including background information, discussion questions, and additional resources is available on their website.

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On Monday, the IDF cleared for publication that on Sunday night IDF forces arrested an Arab terrorist, right after he shot at the gate of Kibbutz Migdal Oz, in Gush Etzion.

IDF saw the terrorist shoot at the south gate with an improvised gun, and began a 10 minute chase, which resulted in his capture.

Over the past few weeks, there has been an increase in Palestinian terror attacks in Gush Etzion, including shooting at buses, roadside bombs, firebombs, and of course stone throwing. Kibbutz Migdal Oz has been a particularly favorite target of theirs.

It is not known at this time, if the terrorist is linked to other shootings in Gush Etzion.

Improvised gun used in a Palestinian terror attack in Gush Etzion.

On Sunday afternoon, IDF forces arrested three suspicious Arabs at the Gush Etzion junction, averting a terror attack.

All three were carrying knives, and during their interrogation admitted that they were planning on committing a terror attack when the IDF caught them.

Speaking in a closed forum to his soldiers, Etzion brigade commander, Colonel Yani Elaluf said that,  ”We aren’t at the threshold of a third Initifada, based on the number of attacks in Judea and Samaria, we’re already in the third Initifada.”

He expressed optimism, that unlike the previous Initifada, this time the IDF is prepared to fight it properly.

The Jerusalem District Attorney’s office decided on Sunday to close the file against the 13 year old boy who was their final suspect in the throwing of a firebomb that hit a Palestinian taxi in Gush Etzion in August.

The prosecutor closed the case due to lack of evidence that the boy or his friends, whom they had released months earlier, had thrown any firebombs.

On the day the taxi was hit by a firebomb, Arabs thew firebombs and stones at Jewish-driven cars in ten different locations throughout Judea and Samaria, causing some to consider the possibility that it was an Arab who threw the firebomb, and it missed its intended target, hitting the Arab taxi instead. It’s not known if the police investigated that possibility.

Overnight Palestinians threw a firebomb at IDF troops near the entrance to Migdal Oz. No one was injured in the drive-by attack. IDF troops are searching for the terrorists. In the past, the terrorists have escaped into nearby Beit Faj’r.

Migdal Oz has been the repeated target for Palestinian firebomb attacks.

Pressure from residents of Gush Etzion and the settlers’ leadership over the past many months against the construction of a security fence around their territory has yielded results, apparently, as IDF Vice Chief of Staff Yair Naveh has announced this week that the completion of the Gush Etzion area security fence is being frozen, Makir Rishon reports.

In a letter received by local council head Davidi Pearl, General Naveh informs him that “continued work along the Gush Etzion track is being re-evaluated, and the matter is awaiting a decision by the political echelon. Until such a decision is reached, the work will not be renewed.”

The council head also received a personal, verbal confirmation from Central Command chief General Nitzan Alon.

“We realize that the fence is, in fact, a border. Once the fence is up, we’ll be outside the state of Israel,” Pearl said. “There 70,000 Jewish residents in Gush Etzion, and we’ll have next to us another 30,000 Palestinians; they would build here but we won’t be permitted to develop our settlements. We’ll be stuck. We want to see a contiguous flow between Gush Etzion and the state, and if we are included in the consensus, there’s no reason to build a fence to the west of us.”

Gush Etzion residents have let out a sigh of relief at this first gain in their fight against the fence which started several months ago, although, for the moment, this may only be a temporary reprieve.

In recent months, Gush Etzion residents have signed a petition against the fence construction, and council chief Pearl met with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the issue, showed him the blueprints for the fence and asked him to prevent the project. During a tour of the area by Knesset Speraker Reuven Rivlin, he called for a reexamination of the plan to erext a fence in the area.

“We know that the prime minister elected, following his visit to Gush Etzion, to freeze the plan and reexamine it,” Pearl told Makor Rishon, “but we’re clear that the decree has not been removed for good, and that the matter will come up again in discussion. For now, we succeeded in freezing it. When a new government id in place we’ll bring the issue up once more for a discussion and will deal with it again.”

The reason for the objection to the fence on the part of local Jewish residents is that it cuts them off from the population inside the “green line,” which marks the border separating the IDF from the Jordanian Legion at the signing of the armistice agreement in 1949.

Constructed of the security fence started a decade ago, with a decision of the Ariel Sharon government to do all it could to stop entry of suicide bombers into Israel. Out of the planned 500 miles, less than 300 miles have been completed, about 60 percent of the original plan, at the cost so far of $2.7 billion. The work has been stopped some five years ago due to budgetary constraints.

Among the Jews of Judea and Samaria there is a common understanding that the plan of leaders in the Likud and in Labor and the other left of center Zionist parties is to eventually annex the “cluster of settlements” while abandoning everyone living east of the fence. Preventing being stuck on the wrong side of the fence is therefore crucial for the Jews of Gush Etzion.

Gush Etzion (Etzion Bloc) is a cluster of Israeli settlements in the Judaean mountains south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The core group includes four villages that were founded in the 1940′s on land purchased in the 1920s ’30s, and destroyed by the Jordanian Legion in 1948. The area was left outside the 1949 armistice “green line.” Today’s Gush Etzion settlements were rebuilt after the 1967 Six-Day War, along with new communities that have expanded beyond the original Bloc.

On Friday evening two rockets hit the Gush Etzion area, south of Jerusalem.

Residents were on their way to synagogue on Friday night, when the sirens went off.

A short time later 2 rockets hit in the Gush Etzion area. No injuries or damage were reported from those strikes.