Masuot Yitzhak colony

Masuot Yitzhak is a moshav located in southern occupied Palestine, near Ashkelon. The original kibbutz in Gush Etzion was destroyed and its residents were evacuated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. A new settlement was established in 1949 at a different location.

The Masuot Yitzhak kibbutz was originally founded in 1945 in Gush Etzion, midway between Jerusalem and Hebron. The settlers were young pioneers from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Germany who had arrived before World War II. The kibbutz was named after Isaac Halevi Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine.

The settlers of Masuot Yitzhak rose to the challenge of living in the mountains of what is called Judea, building homes and cultivating orchards. In 1948, the Arab army captured the Gush Etzion settlement—residents of Kfar Etzion were massacred, and all others in Gush Etzion, including those of Masuot Yitzhak, were taken prisoner and imprisoned in Jordan.

After their return from captivity in 1949, the pioneers of Masuot Yitzhak established a new moshav with the same name near Shafir, an area historically inhabited by Palestinians during biblical times. Shafir served as the base for the southern front of the Israeli occupation army during the 1948 war. The land on which the new Masuot Yitzhak was founded was until recently part of the depopulated Palestinian village of Al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya. In 2022, the settler population was approximately 705.

Sources:
Due to the scarcity of Arabic sources, Hebrew sources were used, including:

• The official Hebrew website of the settlement
• The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics
• The village of Al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya from the Palestine Remembered website