Beit Hagai (, ), also Hagai, is an

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Israeli Jews, Jewish identity or ethni ...

organized as a

community settlement A community settlement (, ''Yishuv Kehilati'') is a type of town or village in Israel and in the West Bank. In an ordinary town, anyone may buy property, but in a community settlement, the village's residents are organized in a cooperative an ...

located in the southern

Hebron Hills The Hebron Hills, also known as Mount Hebron (, ), are a mountain ridge, geographic region, and geologic formation, constituting the southern part of the Judaean Mountains, Judean Mountains. The Hebron Hills are located in the southern West Ban ...

in the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

. The settlement population was 460 in 2004, according to a classified government document published by the

Haaretz ''Haaretz'' (; originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , , ) is an List of newspapers in Israel, Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. The paper is published in Hebrew lan ...

newspaper, and lies within the municipal jurisdiction of the

Har Hevron Regional Council The Har Hevron Regional Council (, ''Mo'atza Azorit Har Hevron'') is an Israeli regional council in the southern Judean Hills area of Mount Hebron, in the southern West Bank, administering Israeli settlements. The headquarters are located in the ...

. The

religious Religion is a range of social- cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural ...

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

ish community's name, Haggai, is an acronym of the

given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a f ...

s Hanan Krauthammer, Gershon Klein, and Yaakov Zimmerman, three Nir

Yeshiva A yeshiva (; ; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are studied in parallel. The stu ...

(

Kiryat Arba Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba () is an urban Israeli settlement on the outskirts of Hebron, in the southern Israeli-occupied West Bank. Founded in 1968, in it had a population of . The international community considers Israeli settlements in the ...

) students murdered in the

1980 Hebron terrorist attack On 2 May 1980, six Jews – three Israelis, two American Israelis, and one Canadian – were killed, and another 20 Jews were injured at 7:30 pm on a Friday night as they returned home from Sabbath prayer services at the Cave of the Patriarchs i ...

. The community

rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...

for Beit Hagai is Rabbi Moshe Eliezer Rabinovich (HaLevy). In it had a population of . The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.

History

Beit Haggai was established in 1984 by former classmates of the victims and their families, with assistance from the Amana organization, the settlement branch of the Israeli right wing organization

Gush Emunim Gush Emunim (, lit. "Bloc of the Faithful") was an Israeli ultranationalist religious Zionist Orthodox Jewish right-wing fundamentalist activist movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan ...

. In 1989, the residents of Beit Hagai founded a special needs children's village which has provided a home, education, and services for dozens of young people. In 1991 the Israeli state, through the World Zionist Organization's land settlement unit, granted Beit Haggai a 49-year lease to operate the largest stone quarry in the West Bank, and quarry royalties constitute 80 percent of the community's revenues. During the

First Intifada The First Intifada (), also known as the First Palestinian Intifada, was a sustained series of Nonviolent resistance, non-violent protests, acts of civil disobedience, Riot, riots, and Terrorism, terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians ...

Beit Haggai was targeted by the Palestinian uprising. Several residents were killed in shooting attacks by Palestinians near the village. In the years of the

Second Intifada The Second Intifada (; ), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a major uprising by Palestinians against Israel and its Israeli-occupied territories, occupation from 2000. Starting as a civilian uprising in Jerusalem and October 2000 prot ...

, another three settlers were killed on the roads leading into and out of Beit Hagai. Israeli settlers living in Beith Hagai were also responsible for violence against Palestinians. The population of the village doubled between the years 2001 and 2007, and today there are approximately 95 families in the settlement. In the summer of 2006, the village welcomed a group of families who had been evacuated from

Kfar Darom Kfar Darom () was a kibbutz and an Israeli settlement within the Gush Katif bloc in the Gaza Strip. History Kfar Darom was founded on 250 dunams of land (about 25 hectares or 60 acres) purchased in 1930 by Tuvia Miller for a fruit orchard on t ...

Gush Katif Gush Katif () was a bloc of 17 Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip. In August 2005, the Israel Defense Forces removed the 8,600 Israeli residents from their homes after a decision from the Cabinet of Israel. The communities were demo ...

, as a part of Israel's disengagement from the settlements in the Gaza Strip. The group established a new settlement, and also reopened the

kollel A kollel (also kolel) (, , , , a "gathering" or "collection" f scholars is an institute for full-time, advanced Torah study, study of the Talmud and rabbinic literature. Like a yeshiva, a kollel features Shiur (Torah), shiurim (lectures) and ...

for dayanim which had operated in Kfar Darom. The Kollel is named ''Or Yosef'' (Light of Joseph) after Yossi Shuk, a resident of the village, who had been killed during the Palestinian uprising in December 2005. Also in 2006, an additional new settlement was established. This initiative was part of the building plan of the village. Likewise, an observation point in memory of Yossi Shuk was built on nearby Rehavam Hill (named after Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi). On August 31, 2010 four residents of Beit Hagai—Yitzhak and Tali Ames, Kochava Even Haim and Avishai Schindler—were shot dead by local Palestinian militants while driving a car near the settlement.

Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades Al-Qassam Brigades, also known as the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (EQB; ), are the military wing of the Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islamist organization Hamas. Led by Mohammed Deif until his death on 13 July 2024, Al-Qassam Brigades ar ...

, the military wing of the Palestinian organization

Hamas The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...

, claimed responsibility for the attack.Rabbi at Terror Victims' Funeral: Jews Want Peace, Evildoers Seek to Destroy Us
Haaretz, 1 September 2010

Community

Most inhabitants of the settlement work in

or in the surrounding Har Hebron area. Some, however, even travel as far north as

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

or south as

Be'er Sheva Beersheba ( / ; ), officially Be'er-Sheva, is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the centre of the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in Israel, the eighth-most po ...

to work. Many of the settlers are involved in

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

. Some of the residents work in the

youth village A youth village () is a boarding school model first developed in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s to care for groups of children and teenagers fleeing the Nazis. Henrietta Szold and Recha Freier were the pioneers in this sphere, known as youth ...

. There are approximately 15 yeshiva students (In Hebrew, ''avreichim'') who live in Beit Hagai. The community maintains a close connection with the families of the three boys for whom the village is named, and every year, on the anniversary of their murder, "Shabbat Hagai" is commemorated in memory of the three. Their families are hosted for that weekend by the community. Central buildings in Beit Hagai are; a central

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

, a

Sephardic Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

synagogue, children's daycare centers and an infant daycare center, a medical clinic, a

mikvah A mikveh or mikvah (, ''mikva'ot'', ''mikvot'', or ( Ashkenazic) ''mikves'', lit., "a collection") is a bath used for ritual immersion in Judaism to achieve ritual purity. In Orthodox Judaism, these regulations are steadfastly adhered t ...

, a celebration hall, a

Bnei Akiva Bnei Akiva (, , "Children of Akiva") is the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, with over 125,000 members in 42 countries. It was first established in Mandatory Palestine in 1929, advocating the values of Torah and labor. Bne ...

branch and more.

References

External links

Profile on Amana website
{{Authority control Religious Israeli settlements Populated places established in 1984 Nahal settlements 1984 establishments in the Israeli Civil Administration area Community settlements Israeli settlements in the West Bank Hebron Hills