Neve Daniel
Encyclopedia
Neve Daniel is an Israeli settlement
Israeli settlement
An Israeli settlement is a Jewish civilian community built on land that was captured by Israel from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory by the international community. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank...

 and communal settlement
Communal settlement (Israel)
A community settlement is a type of town in Israel. While in an ordinary town anyone may buy property, in a community settlement the town's residents, who are organized in a cooperative, can veto a sale of a house or a business to an undesirable buyer....

 located in western Gush Etzion
Gush Etzion
Gush Etzion is a cluster of Israeli settlements located in the Judaean Mountains directly south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the West Bank, Palestinian territories. The core group includes four agricultural villages that were founded in 1940-1947 on property purchased in the 1920s and 1930s, and ...

 in the southern West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...

. Located south of Jerusalem and just west of Bethlehem
Bethlehem
Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank of the Jordan River, near Israel and approximately south of Jerusalem, with a population of about 30,000 people. It is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate of the Palestinian National Authority and a hub of Palestinian culture and tourism...

, it sits atop one of the highest points in the area - close to 1,000 meters above sea level, and has a view of much of the Mediterranean coastal plain
Israeli Coastal Plain
The Israeli coastal plain is the narrow coastal plain along Israel's Mediterranean Sea coast which houses 70% of the country's population. The plain extends north to south and is divided into a number of areas; the Plain of Zebulun , Hof HaCarmel , the Sharon plain , and the Plain of Judea The...

, as well as the mountains of Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

.

The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law
International law and Israeli settlements
The international community considers the establishment of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories illegal under international law, but Israel maintains that they are consistent with international law because it does not agree that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the...

, but the Israeli government disputes this.

History

Neve Daniel was established on July 18, 1982 on the site of the Cohen Farm. The Cohen Farm was founded on September 6, 1935, on lands purchased from the nearby village of al-Khadr that were transferred to the Jewish National Fund
Jewish National Fund
The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a quasi-governmental, non-profit organisation...

 in 1943. The farm was abandoned during the Arab riots, and remained under Jordanian control
Rule of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Jordan
The West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied by Jordan for a period of nearly two decades starting from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In 1950, the British extended formal recognition to the union between the Hashemite Kingdom and of that part of Palestine under Jordanian occupation and control -...

 until 1967.

The new community was named for Nebi Daniel, a bend in the road several kilometers southwest of Bethlehem, where a convoy bringing supplies to Gush Etzion was ambushed. The road to Gush Etzion had been blocked by Arab villagers who organized attacks on vehicles traveling to and from Jerusalem. The convoys traversing the route consisted mainly of "armored" pickup trucks fitted with makeshift tin and plywood roofs. On 27 March 1948
Gush Etzion Convoy
From November 1947 the roads to the four kibbutzim of Gush Etzion , south of Jerusalem were blockaded by militias from neighbouring villages. The Haganah used a strategy of armed convoys to get supplies to the outposts. The initial convoys to the bloc used open pickup trucks , since the British...

, a convoy of 51 vehicles returning from Gush Etzion encountered an impassable roadblock and came to a halt. The Arabs positioned on both sides of the road opened fire. During a 30-hour battle, fifteen Jews were killed, including the commander of the convoy, Zerubavel Horowitz. The attack also left 73 wounded, and the Haganah's fleet of armored transport vehicles was nearly decimated. Ten armored cars, 4 armored buses and 25 armor-plated trucks were destroyed.

On a visit to Neve Daniel in 2009, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

 told his hosts: "I have been fortunate this afternoon in learning the perspectives that I did not have." At a meeting in the garden of Shaul Goldstein, head of the Gush Etzion regional council, Carter said: "This particular settlement area is not one that I can envision ever being abandoned or changed over into Palestinian territory. This is part of settlements close to the 1967 line that I think will be here forever."

Status under international law

Like all Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories
Israeli-occupied territories
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...

, Neve Daniel is considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. The international community considers Israeli settlements to violate the Fourth Geneva Convention
Fourth Geneva Convention
The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, commonly referred to as the Fourth Geneva Convention and abbreviated as GCIV, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. It was adopted in August 1949, and defines humanitarian protections for civilians...

's prohibition on the transfer of an occupying power's civilian population into occupied territory. Israel disputes that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the Palestinian territories as they had not been legally held by a sovereign prior to Israel taking control of them. This view has been rejected by the International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands...

 and the International Committee of the Red Cross
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...

.

Demography

Neve Daniel has a mixed population of native Israelis and immigrants
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...

 from the former Soviet Union
History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
The vast territories of the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest populations of Jews in the diaspora. Within these territories the Jewish community flourished and developed many of modern Judaism's most distinctive theological and cultural traditions, while also facing periods of...

, France
History of the Jews in France
The history of the Jews of France dates back over 2,000 years. In the early Middle Ages, France was a center of Jewish learning, but persecution increased as the Middle Ages wore on...

, Canada, and the United States
American Jews
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...

. The population doubled from 800 residents in 2001 to nearly 1,500 in 2008. The majority of residents are religious Zionists.
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