It was 3 a.m., and outside it was pitch black and deadly quiet. Quivering in anticipation, 30 young men and women sat and waited. They began their hurried work when the trucks arrived, loading building supplies, ready-made walls, mattresses and a tank of water onto the three pick-ups. Shivering from the late night chill, they mounted the trucks and traveled quietly under the cover of darkness for more than an hour, careful not to arouse the neighboring Arab villages.

Tent camp in Mishmar Hanegev.
Photo: JNF

Finally, the lead driver stopped his transport in the middle of the wilderness, his only explanation: "Here."

The early light of dawn began to spread across the sky as they jumped off the trucks and surveyed the barren land that was to become their new home. One group assembled the shacks they would live in from the wooden planks and half-built structures they brought with them, while another group started a fire and prepared food, and yet another constructed the fence.

The sun rose and they later remembered it as the most beautiful sunrise they had ever seen.

At the same time, 10 other settlements were being established by 10 other groups all over the southern part of the country. Later that morning, the newspapers reported on their secret operation in large letters on the front page: "They reclaimed the Negev."

It was the night after Yom Kippur ended, recalls Chana Ben-Tzur, who at 18 was one of the 30-odd pioneers who established Kibbutz Mishmar Hanegev, one of these "11 points" established on October 6, 1946.

The population of the Negev at the time was about 50,000, mostly Beduin, and the Morrison-Grady plan of that year to resolve the issue of Palestine allocated the northern Negev to the Arabs, while the southern Negev would remain part of the British Mandate.

The heads of the Yishuv decided they must do something to change the political reality on the ground. After different plots of land throughout the Negev were painstakingly purchased privately by Jews and by the Jewish National Fund, an operation was planned by the Jewish Agency to settle those patches, thereby raising the chances the Negev would be included within the borders of the future Jewish state.

The parcels purchased were chosen based on their proximity to each other, allowing each settlement to provide logistical assistance and security to the others.

The young pioneers were selected about 10 days before the operation was to commence and represented a potpourri of new immigrants who had run from a crumbling Europe and children of new immigrants, all eager to make their mark on their homeland.

The operation was planned for that night to confuse the British, who would never have expected the Jews to attempt such a feat only hours after the end of Yom Kippur. The British were also expected to sleep late that morning, as it was a Sunday, their day off.

The leaders of the Yishuv correctly guessed that the high number of settlements would make it difficult for the British to take them down and would sway public opinion toward leaving the Negev in Jewish hands.

Hours after the makeshift huts had been erected and covered with roofs, British officers appeared, recalls Yossi Tzur, one of the first residents of Kibbutz Shoval, a few kilometers away from Mishmar Hanegev. They looked around, he says, seemingly mesmerized by the sudden presence of the settlements, and continued on their way.

None of the settlements was ever removed by the British, and today all of them but one are still standing - during the disengagement from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, Kfar Darom was evacuated by order of the Israeli government. (The original Kfar Darom was evacuated after a long siege during the War of Independence, but reestablished nearby in 1970.)

The settlement operation in 1946 was and still is considered one of the most important in the years leading up to the establishment of the state. The youths who risked their lives in the middle of the night are considered Zionist pioneers and heroes. But today, 60 years later, those who say they are driven by the very same ideology are fighting the state that was founded on their convictions.

THE MAJORITY of Israelis, however, would disagree.

"There's no doubt that the society and government of Israel relate to us very differently than they relate to the pioneers of 1946," admits Emily Amrusi, spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The proof? The common use of the word "occupation," she says. "If you say occupation, you're saying it's not yours."

And though she says the modern settlement movement is simply a continuation of the pre-state pioneering operations, others claim the public doesn't support it because it isn't necessary anymore.

"We have a Jewish state now," explains Prof. Menahem Hofnung, an expert in political science, law and national security at Hebrew University. "Then, there wasn't a state and settlement was the consensus of the Zionist movement. But nowadays, especially in the last 20 years, most of the world and a significant part of the Arab world is willing to recognize Israel within its 1967 borders."

Resettlement and annexing more land means a binational state, he says, which is seen by many Israelis as a continuation of the conflict and the prevention of any agreement with the Palestinians. The settlement movement, therefore, is looked upon as adding fuel to the fire and perpetuating the conflict.

"The aim of Zionism was to ensure the creation of a viable Jewish state. Once this was achieved, we can stop resettling and look for reconciliation with the Arabs," he says, while confessing his doubts over the possibility of peace with the Palestinians.

Israel also boasts one of the world's strongest armies and, says Dr. Zvi Shilony, a historical geographer at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, a majority of Israelis believe we are strong enough to defend ourselves without the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The settlers maintain that without the West Bank as a buffer zone, it would be much more difficult for the country to defend itself against the Palestinians, says Amrusi. This, many settlers argue, is clearly illustrated by the constant barrage of Kassams on Sderot and surrounding areas even after the disengagement.