A year into the war, the slogan "only settlement will bring security" became the prevailing opinion in almost every home in Israel.
However, there are not many cases in which a settlement point that is established succeeds in immediately and tangibly thwarting a serious security danger that threatened the communities in Judea and Samaria.
This the story of Givat Or Nachman in Binyamin, which was established about six months ago on the ridge that rises south of the settlements of Amichai and Adi Ad in Gush Shiloh. The hill is now staffed by a family and a core of young men who are involved in developing the place, but until recently the picture of a Jewish mother walking calmly and peacefully with her child on the mountain was only a distant dream.
Until about a year ago, a fierce battle was still raging on the heights of the ridge where the hill is located – between the communities of the Shiloh bloc and the activists of the Palestinian Authority and the Arabs of the area, who tried with all their might to establish a new Arab village there.
The village, which was built as part of a large-scale project by the nationalist-Palestinian Tabu company, is intended to include hundreds of Arab housing units that will dominate from the top of the ridge over all the communities in the Shiloh bloc, reaching a distance of a few dozen meters from the boundaries of Amichai.
The residents discovered the dangerous project only when the Arab bulldozers had already begun work on the ground, and were forced to engage in a massive battle. For more than three years, the residents waged a determined struggle on the ground, which included physically blocking bulldozers, mass rallies and a public struggle, until the construction of the village stopped completely and the Arabs completely withdrew from the strategic ridge, with some of the village's infrastructure still standing.
About six months ago, in order to thwart any attempt to rebuild the village in the future, residents of Gush Shiloh decided to establish a permanent settlement point that would eventually become a settlement. An initial nucleus of a pioneer family and a number of boys was formed and planted a peg at the top of the mountain. The hill was named Or Nachman after Nachman Mordoff - a settlement activist from the hills who was murdered in Eli and who worked during his life to establish a Jewish settlement near the ridge where the hill was built.
Since then, the hill has undergone a series of demolition campaigns by the security establishment, which did not approve of population exchanges on the mount, but the core of the residents still stands firm on the mountain and works tirelessly to develop the site and prepare it for the absorption of additional families.
* Arutz 7 contributed to this article.
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