(JNS) Last month, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration set borders known as “blue lines” for a new 150-acre Gush Etzion town called Nahal Heletz, located in the Judean hills just outside of Jerusalem, in an area with a Jewish presence dating back thousands of years.
The new community, also known as “Neve Ori,” in memory of 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher, a Gush resident who was murdered in 2019 by an Arab terrorist, will essentially create a contiguous Jewish presence between the Etzion bloc community of Neve Daniel and Jerusalem’s southern neighborhood of Gilo.
Nahal Heletz was one of five communities in Judea and Samaria that received Cabinet approval in June in response to the Palestinian Authority’s push for statehood and support for international legal action against Israel.
A spokesperson for the Gush Etzion Regional Council told JNS that at this point, the municipality has not yet solidified building plans for the new community. However, JNS obtained a copy of a form, recently sent out as a feeler to local residents and non-residents alike, to see if there are those who had interest in moving to the new community, essentially as founding pioneers, once plans were finalized.
The approval for Nahal Heletz and the four other communities, along with additional building in Judea and Samaria, drew ire from outgoing European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
“The European Union condemns the planned so-called legalization of five Israeli settlement outposts and the announcement of thousands of new housing units in the occupied West Bank,” according to the E.U. statement.
The move was also blasted by Israeli left-wing organizations including Emek Shaveh, Combatants for Peace and Peace Now, all of which oppose a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria.
According to the Regavim organization, a young Christian Arab woman named Alice Kisiya, whose family lives in the nearby Palestinian Authority town of Beit Jala, has drawn international attention to the issue by creating a series of viral videos and appearing on international news channels to falsely claim that the area belongs to her family.
Naomi Linder Kahn, director of the International Division of Regavim, told JNS, “Regavim has 10 years of documentation from Israel’s courts, both on a municipal and supreme court level, indicating this land does not belong to Kisiya family.
“Nahal Heletz, per the court, is a combination of Israeli state land and private “‘himnuta,” an arm of the Jewish National Fund which purchases land on behalf of the Jewish People,” said Kahn.
“The Family from Beit Jala [Kisiya] said they owned a part of that land and went to court. However, claims that they owned the land and had building permits were proven to be false. They lost in court and the structures built there were demolished,” she added.
Kahn noted that the family gained global support when they accused Israel of discriminating against them as Christian Arabs. However, she stressed, “they have absolutely no claim to the land. Two years ago, they invented a new name for the area calling it ‘Al-Makhrur,’ saying it was some ancient Arab village. But that name didn’t even exist.”
At the same time, she explained that UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, recognized part or all of the area where Nahal Heletz sits as a world heritage site within the “State of Palestine.”
UNESCO referred to the area as the “Land of Olives and Vines – Cultural Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir.” Battir is a P.A. village in the area, named for Betar, an ancient Jewish town that fell in the final battle of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans in 135 CE. The town was recognized by UNESCO for its magnificent ancient agricultural terracing.
Kahn stressed UNESCO called it the Land of Olives and Vines to leave its status ambiguous, adding that Israel doesn’t recognize declarations of world heritage sites in “Palestine.”
Kahn said the area has been a battleground for a long time “because of the area’s strategic importance as a crucial buffer zone, protecting Jerusalem from the south, and the fact that it overlooks the two main southern access points to Jerusalem—the tunnel road and the road to Malha, Road 285.
“The P.A for years has been attempting to annex the area, along with many other strategic points throughout Area C. Regavim demands the government take action,” Kahn continued.
Eve Harow, a licensed tour guide, educator and podcaster, told JNS, “Nahal Heletz is right next to Battir. One of the biggest mistakes Israel made was turning Battir over to the P.A. That is flat-out ours. It’s from Bar Kokhba, you can still see remains there from the war with the Romans. It’s actually one of the most beautiful examples of Jewish agriculture from the times of the Second Temple.”
She added, “We have coins and the history books to prove that this was part of an independent Jewish State called ‘Beit Yisrael’ from 132-136 CE. It’s really the height of chutzpah to take our ancient terracing and say it was there’s. The people who built it and used it, were Judeans from Judea.”
Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, co-chairs of the Sovereignty Movement, hailed the approval to build Nahal Heletz.
“It is extremely important because of the need for Jewish continuity of communities between Jerusalem and Gush Etzion. As we know, the Arabs have been building in recent years precisely in these areas in order to prevent Jewish continuity,” they said.
They added: “Nahal Heletz is very important to the Greater Jerusalem Plan, which will add about a quarter of a million Jews to the capital. In this way, the existing sovereignty of Jerusalem will also spread over Gush Etzion, Ma’ale Adumim, Givat Ze’ev and parts of Binyamin.”
The pair concluded, “Jerusalem must grow, expand south, north and east in order to deal with the dangerous demographics, as the Arabs are already almost 40 percent of the population of Jerusalem.”
