Elon Moreh

Elon Moreh falls under the jurisdiction of the Shomron Regional Council and occupies a site on the slopes of Mount Kabir, northeast of Nablus.[1] Its development links the history of a religious-nationalist settlement group with the emergence of a permanent community in Samaria and an important judicial decision concerning private property and military requisition.[2][5]

The community lies east of the separation barrier, outside Nablus.[6] It is among the Jewish communities on the ridge west of the Allon Road, along the eastern ridges of the Samaria hills, in territory designated Area C under the Accords.[7] Mount Kabir overlooks the area of biblical Shechem near present-day Nablus; the location and its surrounding biblical landscape are central to residents’ descriptions of the community’s significance.[8][9]

The name connects the modern community with the biblical account of Abraham in the area and the promise in Genesis 12:7, “To your descendants will I give this land.”[1] Its biblical associations also include the account in Genesis 33:19 of Jacob purchasing land near Elon Moreh and Shechem.[1]

The Elon Moreh group originated in Kiryat Arba in the years before the Yom Kippur War and became an influential component of the emerging settlement movement.[2] Its religious-nationalist milieu included students and graduates of Jerusalem’s Merkaz Harav yeshiva, particularly followers of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, who advocated retaining all parts of the Land of Israel and settling territories captured in the Six-Day War.[2] Earlier activity by this circle in Hebron in 1968 contributed to the establishment of Kiryat Arba and Jewish settlement in Hebron.[2]

Founding activist Benny Katzover recalled that he and Menachem Felix organized a settlement nucleus after deciding that demonstrations and political pressure alone would not overcome government resistance to settlement in Samaria.[10] Initially called the “Group for Settlement in the Shechem Area,” it subsequently adopted the name Elon Moreh and, within approximately a month, attracted around 30 families and several single men and women.[10] Its founders were among those who formulated Gush Emunim’s settlement ideology, which developed amid efforts after 1967 to establish Jewish communities in territories captured during the war.[11]

The organizers sought official backing but encountered differing responses within the government.[10] Katzover recalled support from Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Communications Minister Shimon Peres, and Transportation Minister Gad Yaacobi, while Prime Minister Golda Meir told women representing the group that the time was not right for a settlement drive.[10] Gush Emunim emerged after the Yom Kippur War, and its union with the Elon Moreh group helped shape the movement.[2]

The first planned encampment was near the northern fence of the Bahad 3 military base, by the Har Brakha junction, following site visits with Ariel Sharon.[10] On July 5, 1974, after a one-day postponement requested by Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, members arrived without government authorization and erected 16 tents; the army subsequently removed them.[10] Participants in the initial 1974 effort included Kook, Sharon, Zevulun Hammer, Judah Ben-Meir, and Geulah Cohen, and the removal took place on the prime minister’s orders.[4]

Repeated attempts followed in the Nablus–Sebastia region, with seven efforts stopped and dismantled by the army.[11] During the eighth attempt, over Hanukkah in 1975, approximately 2,000 people—including group members and yeshiva students on holiday—gathered near Sebastia.[11] After two days of confrontation, the participants agreed to leave and move to the military camp at Kadum while awaiting a decision on a future location, an arrangement known as the Kadum compromise.[11] Peres agreed that the group could begin at a military camp, receive employment, and have its settlement demands considered by the government; “Elon Moreh No. 1” appeared on maps in December 1975.[10]

The establishment at Kadum challenged the Labor government’s settlement policy.[12] Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin regarded it as a challenge to government authority and threatened forcible removal, but that threat was not carried out and the government did not recognize the settlement’s legality at the time.[12] Likud’s rise to power in 1977 subsequently helped enable the settlement movement’s expansion.[2] After Menachem Begin’s July 1977 visit to the United States, he recognized three previously unauthorized civilian settlements as legal and permanent, including Kadum, then described as renamed Elon Moreh.[12] U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance criticized the recognition as an obstacle to peace, an assessment President Jimmy Carter shared while downplaying the action’s significance.[12]

Another unauthorized encampment was established a short distance south of Nablus on September 18, 1978, by several dozen Gush Emunim members.[13] Participants identified the location as biblical Elon Moreh, and their leaders called the action the “proper answer by the land of Israel faithful to the Camp David Agreement.”[13] The Israeli army surrounded the site, and the Cabinet reportedly decided that the encampment would be removed.[13]

In 1979, a group established an unauthorized hilltop settlement near the Palestinian village of Rujeib.[1][3] The site was on land belonging to Palestinians from the village, whose owners challenged its use for settlement.[14] On October 22, 1979, the High Court of Justice ruled in favor of the petitioners in HCJ 390/79, Izzat Muhammad Mustafa Duweikat et al. v. Government of Israel et al., commonly known as the Elon Moreh case.[15]

A five-judge panel headed by Supreme Court President Moshe Landau examined the justification for the location.[3] IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan testified that the military wanted the site for security and counterterrorism purposes, whereas Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and other military experts maintained that political considerations had determined its selection.[3] Landau accepted the latter assessment, and the Court ordered the settlers to evacuate within 30 days, with the military government paying the petitioners’ trial costs.[3]

The Court ordered evacuation because it found insufficient evidence that the site had been selected for security reasons.[3] The decision addressed the use of private land at this site and was followed by a Begin government policy that new settlements would be built only on land declared state land; it did not itself decide the legality of the settlement enterprise as a whole.[5][14]

In November 1979, Weizman proposed moving the residents to government-owned land at Jabbel-el-Kabir near Nablus.[16] Gush Emunim leaders rejected the proposal because they regarded removal as inconsistent with their principle that Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel should not be dismantled.[16] Disagreement also continued within the government over relocation arrangements and settlement policy.[16]

About three months after the ruling, residents moved to government-built homes at Djebil Kebir, approximately six miles from the original site; the initial housing accommodated 17 families and cost more than $1 million.[1] Katzover later recalled that Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook compelled the group to move to the location where the community now stands.[17] A rabbi involved in advising the group recalled that most members, including families and children, climbed the Kabir range and reestablished the community there.[18]

On March 28, 2002, a terrorist entered the Gavish family’s home in Elon Moreh and opened fire, killing Rachel and David Gavish, their 20-year-old son Avraham, and Rachel’s 83-year-old father, Yitzhak Kanner.[19] Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.[19]

During enforcement of a ten-month construction freeze in 2009, residents sat on the ground to prevent security forces and Civil Administration representatives from entering the community and were evacuated by security personnel.[20] A Civil Administration official said inspectors issued freeze orders and confiscated building materials.[20] Benny Katzover alleged that police beat residents and said an order had been given to a person building two guesthouses.[20]

Elon Moreh’s listed population was 2,136 in 2025, compared with 2,075 in 2024.[21] The same population table lists 1,870 residents in 2020, while a 2018 report placed the population at approximately 1,900.[10][21] These figures refer to their respective reporting years rather than a single current estimate.

A resident interviewed in 2020 recalled that the community contained 50 families when he arrived in 1982.[8] The community is identified as Orthodox Jewish, and its early organizing nucleus included families as well as single men and women.[1][10]

Residents’ religious understanding of Elon Moreh draws on biblical associations with Abraham, Jacob, and Shechem.[1] In a 2020 interview, resident Eliav Hillel called it a place where “the Bible played out” and compared its importance to that of the Temple Mount, expressing his religious understanding of the location.[8] These attachments accompany the community’s roots in a movement shaped by Merkaz Harav and Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook.[2]

Community institutions include the Nahalat Tzvi primary school, named for Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, and the Birkat Yosef hesder yeshiva. Elon Moreh also has medical and dental clinics, a post office, a supermarket, retail stores, a sports center, a swimming pool, a library, senior and youth centers, synagogues, and two mikvahs. Most residents reportedly work in Elon Moreh, while some commute to nearby towns.[1]

Shmuel Rosner, in a personal account in the Jewish Review of Books, described Elon Moreh as a religious settlement on Har Kabir overlooking biblical Shechem, where some of Gush Emunim’s founding figures lived.[9] He recalled that a reception committee initially approved a proposed stay by him and his wife in the mid-1990s while she worked on a book about settlers.[9] Three days before the planned move, residents challenged that decision and called a general assembly; after attending, the couple concluded that they would not be accepted.[9] Rosner presented the episode as an illustration of the community’s response to outsiders associated with journalism and secular Tel Aviv.[9]

Mount Kabir is the community’s defining geographic site. From the ridge, Elon Moreh overlooks the area of biblical Shechem near present-day Nablus, a landscape that figures prominently in both the community’s biblical associations and Rosner’s description of the settlement.[1][9]

The current community was established on Mount Kabir after residents left the Rujeib-area site involved in the 1979 case.[1][18] The earlier site remains historically notable because the petition brought by Rujeib landowners produced HCJ 390/79 and the resulting evacuation order.[15][3]