Israeli settlement in the West Bank
Bat Ayin
Bat Ayin is an Israeli settlement in Gush Etzion in the West Bank, between Jerusalem and Hebron, founded in 1989 by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg, in lands that Israel confiscated from the neighbouring Palestinian villages of Khirbet Beit Zakariyyah and Jab'a.
It is administered by the Gush Etzion Regional Council, with a population of less than 1,000, consisting mainly of "Ba'alei T'shuva" Jews with Hasidic tendencies. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this.
How locals move
Getting around Bat Ayin the local way
- Get inHitchhiking (described below) can be difficult if you have a suitcase.
- Get inIf you prefer to hitchhike, take the 31 or 32 local buses to the trempiada (see below).
- Get inIf you don't have a car, the fastest, cheapest and easiest travel option is hitchhiking, or in Israeli English, "to catch a tremp".
- Get inThe main hitchhiking hub is in the southern exit from Jerusalem, a place called "Tzomet HaMinharot", or informally the trempiada.
- Get inFrom here you can get another tremp to a specific settlement, although many Israelis consider it unsafe to hitchhike here (in the past, it has been the site of kidnappings and shootings by Palestinians).
- Get inFrom Beit Shemesh, hitchhiking is easiest, but the 409 bus also runs several times a day.
- Get aroundThe only exception is Efrat, which is very long and narrow, so hitchhiking or taking an (infrequent) bus may be more effective.
- Get aroundHitchhiking (from within a settlement) is a safer and faster option.
From Wikivoyage: Gush Etzion, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-07.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Petar Milošević (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.