Tekoa (Israeli Settlement)

Tekoa lies in eastern Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, east of Efrat, and at the foot of Herodium.[1][2] The Israeli settlement is east of the nearby Palestinian town of Teqoa and at a lower elevation.[1] It overlooks slopes of the Judean Desert.[3]

Accounts characterize Tekoa as a small, mixed community that includes religious and secular residents. One profile described it as unusually pluralistic among Jewish towns in the West Bank, reporting that it welcomed both observant and secular residents and did not use an admissions board to screen applicants. Other descriptions call it an artists’ village and note that parts of Tekoa Daled have views of the desert.[2][4]

Sources differ on Tekoa’s exact establishment date. An Encyclopedia Judaica entry gives 1975.[5] A separate Encyclopedia Judaica entry and a Ynet travel report give 1977, as does a Jewish Virtual Library table.[3][6][7] The sources do not reconcile the differing dates. One account says Tekoa was founded by a group affiliated with Gush Emunim, while another describes its founders as American graduates of the Revisionist Zionist youth group Betar.[6][2]

The founders brought Zionist commitments as well as ambitions for economic and professional activity. Tekoa leader Bobby Brown described their goal as “to build and produce, to advance academic research, and infuse the American style of professionalism into Israel’s communication industry.”[2]

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics listed Teqoa’s 2015 population as 3,495, excluding residents of nursing homes, penitentiary institutions, and similar institutions.[8] A government spreadsheet gave a preliminary estimate of 4,328.33 at the end of November 2021, following an estimate of 4,168.33 at the beginning of that year, with reported natural increase of 102, internal migration balance of 38, and international migration balance of 20.[9]

A Jewish Virtual Library table lists 948 residents in 1999, 1,596 in 2009, 4,338 in 2020, 4,787 in 2023, 4,902 in 2024, and 4,985 in 2025.[10] Earlier sources give 1,040 in 2002 and 1,179 in 2004.[5][6] Another community table lists 2,157 without specifying a year.[7] Because the reference years and methods are not consistent, these figures should not be treated as directly comparable.

Residents have worked both outside Tekoa and in local agriculture. An Encyclopedia Judaica account mentions mushroom and dairy production.[6] A later report describes Tekoa Farm as a producer of specialty mushrooms, including shiitake, oyster, and King Forest varieties.[4] A Ynet feature says the farm, established in 1986, grew, imported, and marketed mushrooms across Israel, and also mentioned imported ginger, dried tomatoes, shallots, and Belgian endive.[3]

Agricultural activity has also included experimental crops. A report describes a farm growing beans, peas, artichokes, garlic, and grapes in terra rossa soil formed from weathered limestone. Farmers identified strong evening winds as a difficulty, while differences between daytime and nighttime temperatures were said to benefit grapes.[3]

Arts are another element of community life. The Jerusalem Post reported that about one in ten adults pursued some kind of artistic activity and described an artists’ center with studios for crafts including jewelry and musical instruments. A Ynet profile featured a resident who made baskets and household objects from date-palm fronds and held weaving workshops in a Mongolian-style yurt.[4][3]

Some residents have used caves in a nearby wadi for leisure. A Ynetnews profile recounts that resident Yonatan Erlich prepared a multi-room cave for privacy and recreation; the caves had been quarried in chalk stone by monks associated with the Monastery of Haritun the Great.[11]

Tekoa takes its name from biblical Tekoa, associated with the prophet Amos. A Ynet account notes that the modern settlement was named for the biblical locality mentioned in Amos 1:1.[3]

Encyclopedia Judaica identifies ancient Tekoa with Khirbet et Tuquʿ, a ruin southeast of Bethlehem whose visible remains are mainly Byzantine, including two churches, houses, and hostels or markets. It distinguishes the ancient site and the modern Muslim-Arab village of Taqqūʿ from the nearby Jewish settlement.[5] Herodium, at whose foot modern Tekoa is situated, is another prominent site in the surrounding landscape.[1]

Rabbi Menachem Froman (1945–2013), known as “the Tekoa rabbi,” was a member of the Gush Emunim leadership. He opposed the evacuation of settlements while also promoting religiously grounded visions of peace and cultivating ties with Palestinian leaders, including Hamas leaders. An Institute for National Security Studies article characterized his approach as “a deep and creative pursuit of peace, without reservation and without fear.”[12][13]

A movement called Eretz Shalom (“Land of Peace”), which united young supporters of Froman, proposed that settlers who wanted to remain in their homes under a peace agreement could relinquish Israeli citizenship and receive Palestinian citizenship. The proposal was an idea advanced by the movement, not an implemented arrangement.[13]

Dialogue efforts have continued through other local initiatives. Globes profiled Tekoa resident Shaul Judelman, co-director of the Roots Association, which brings Israeli Jewish settlers and Palestinian neighbors together for activities and dialogue. In the period covered by the 2024 report, the organization was trying to rebuild joint activity after the October 7, 2023 attack and the ensuing war; Judelman said it could not then bring local children together. He added that in a “normal” year the group received about 35 pre-military academy groups.[14]

The history of the community has included episodes of violence and strained relations with nearby communities. A Jewish Review of Books account says that after David Rosenfeld was murdered in a knife attack in 1982 at the site of the ancient Herodian fortress, Tekoa residents, including Linda Brown, established an outpost. It describes the encampment amid the neighboring Palestinian village of Ferdis as the settlement that became Nokdim.[2]

The same account describes violence directed at Tekoa’s American settlers as intensifying during the First and Second Palestinian uprisings. It recounts that some American expatriates reconsidered liberal attitudes they had brought with them. Murray Allon, formerly of Brooklyn, recalled in 1991 that he had thought living and working alongside Arabs meant “we’re making peace,” but that the intifada “threw me for a loop.”[2]

A 2006 profile records a resident’s recollection that his family had bought vegetables in Bethlehem and nearby Arab villages before the First Intifada began in 1987, after which, he said, those trips and friendships ended.[11]

In May 2022, a report said that a Palestinian armed with a knife entered Tekoa and was shot and killed by a local resident after being seen in the resident’s yard. The report said Israeli forces searched for suspects; it attributed the person’s identification as 17-year-old Mu’tassem Muhammad Atallah, from nearby Harmala, to Palestinian media, and said Hamas issued a notice claiming he was an operative.[15]

On July 16, 2023, shots were fired from a moving vehicle at a father driving his two daughters near Tekoa Junction, southeast of Bethlehem. The father was critically wounded, and his daughters were injured by flying glass. The report said the vehicle was later found in Bethlehem with a gun and a Hamas flag inside, and that a suspect surrendered at a mosque there. It separately attributed a report of 15 wounded to Palestinian media, a different casualty account from the report’s description of the family’s injuries.[16]

The same report recorded stone-throwing incidents against Israeli vehicles in Tekoa on July 12 and 14, 2023, causing vehicle damage but no casualties.[16] A separate U.S. State Department report described settlers defacing two mosques in a Palestinian town it called Tekoa on April 7, spray-painting “price tag” and “stone terror” on the walls. It did not identify the perpetrators as residents of the Israeli settlement, and the two places should not be conflated on the basis of that report.[17]

In 2001, two Tekoa residents, Kobi Mendel and Yosef Ishran, both 14, were found dead in a cave near the settlement; a preliminary examination indicated they had been stoned to death. A news report recorded conflicting political attributions afterward: Ariel Sharon blamed the Palestinian Authority, while Palestinian official Saeb Erekat condemned the killing and blamed Sharon’s government for the continuing violence. Those statements were reported attributions, not an independent determination of responsibility.[18]

Tekoa is part of the broader dispute over Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel argues that settlements do not violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and that the territory is historically disputed, citing the absence of a previously recognized sovereign, the League of Nations Mandate, and the history of Jewish settlement. Most of the international community considers the settlements inconsistent with international law.[19]

Israel captured the West Bank during the 1967 Six-Day War. Under the Oslo agreements, it was divided into Areas A, B, and C, with different arrangements for Palestinian and Israeli civil and security authority.[19] Tekoa appears on a Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research map within the sector labeled “Israeli localities in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank)”; the sector’s reported population data concern Jewish localities and residents of Israel, not Arab residents who lack Israeli residency status.[20]

The legal dispute has continued in international forums. The International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion stated that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the associated regime, had been established and maintained in violation of international law.[21] Israel, by contrast, argues that settlements do not violate the Fourth Geneva Convention.[19] UN Security Council Resolution 2334 considered settlements established in occupied Palestinian territory since 1967, including East Jerusalem, to have no legal validity and to constitute a violation of international law.[21]

Tekoa was also included in a 2013 housing-tender announcement for 20,000 units in Judea and Samaria. After public criticism in Israel and abroad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Housing Minister Uri Ariel to stop the tenders, saying the measure would create unnecessary conflict with the international community. The report concerned that particular announcement and its suspension, not current building plans.[22]