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Source: http://lennybendavid.com/2009/02/news-item-west-bank-settlement-gets.html
Israel's Alamo
[I*Consult] Lenny Ben-David - Parts of the Etzion Bloc, on the road from Jerusalem to Hebron, were purchased by Jews 20 years before the State of Israel was declared in 1948. When Arab militias attacked Jewish communities throughout the region in 1947 and 1948, the Haganah dispatched soldiers to hold the Etzion Bloc, a key position on the southern approaches to Jerusalem. Five months of siege and attacks against the Jews of the Etzion Bloc ended with the massacre of 250 Jewish defenders on May 13, 1948. After Israel captured the West Bank in June 1967, the children of the Etzion Bloc's defenders returned. Today, the Etzion Bloc is one of the "major population centers" in the West Bank cited by then-President George Bush in a letter to Ariel Sharon in 2004 that would remain under Israeli control after a peace agreement.