Bat Ayin - History

History

Bat Ayin was established by seven families led by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg in 1989. It was founded on land purchased by the Jewish Agency in the early 1900s.

In 2002, four residents of Bat Ayin and Hebron were arrested outside a Palestinian girls' school in East Jerusalem with a baby carriage filled with explosives. Three of the men were convicted of attempted murder.

On February 25, 2007, Erez Levanon, a resident of Bat Ayin, was found killed by multiple stab wounds. His body was found down the hill from the settlement in a secluded location where he frequently prayed. Two teenagers from Khirbet Safa confessed to the murder.

On April 2, 2009, an Arab wielding an ax entered Bat Ayin and murdered Shlomo Nativ, aged 13. A 7-year old child was also wounded. The attacker was arrested a few weeks later by Israel's security services.

In a stone-throwing incident on April 8, 2009 involving Bat Ayin and Khirbet Safa residents, sixteen Palestinians were injured, one critically, when the IDF opened fire.

On May 2, 2009, two off-duty Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and two residents of Bat Ayin were arrested in a rock-throwing incident in which two Khirbet Safa villagers were injured.

In another clash on January 28, 2011, Yousef Ikhlayl, age 17, of Khirbet Safa was shot in the head and died in a hospital in Beit Jala.

On August 16 2012, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a taxi occupied by six members of a Palestinian family as it passed by Bat Ayin. The taxi caught fire and the passengers and were treated for burns at Hadassah Medical Center, Ein Karem. Three boys, aged 12-13, studying at the Bat Ayin yeshiva were arrested as suspects. The attack was condemned by the rabbi of Bat Ayin, who saw it as an example of 'moral degeneration.'

Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch described Bat Ayin as a bastion of extreme rightists and a terror organization.