This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Bat Ayin (Hebrew: בַּת עַיִן, lit., "daughter of the eye" or "apple of the eye", i. e., pupil, Arabic: بات عاين)[2] 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[3] and Jab'a.

[4] It is administered by the Gush Etzion Regional Council, with a population of less than 1,000,[5] consisting mainly of "Ba'alei T'shuva" (back to the faith) Jews with Hasidic tendencies.

[4] Bat Ayin was established by seven families led by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg in 1989, on land originally purchased by Jews before 1948, which, under Jordanian rule until 1967, was treated as "enemy property".

They eventually recruited Shahar's brother Shlomo, Yarden Morag, and Ofer Gamliel, whose engineering background in the IDF was to prove useful in making a bomb.

In early 2001, they began to engage in drive-by shootings of Palestinian cars at nighttime on minor roadways, spraying them with fire from automatic weapons, and the planting of bombs in public buildings.

They were initially stopped near the Beit Orot Yeshiva by Mount Scopus, because it was irregular for Jews with skullcaps to drive in Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem, at night.

The same police officers, Shimon Cohen and Barak Segev, later sighted the same vehicle near a girls' school, close by the Al-Makassad hospital in the At-Tur neighbourhood.

The officers stopped the two and examined the car, finding that the trailer had two containers of gasoline rigged to two TNT bricks, and propane gas tanks.

The explosive charge consisted of a "vergin" (military battery), and the device, in a baby carriage, was timed to explode at 7:35 am., when dozens of girls would have been entering the schoolgrounds.

[29] 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.

[30] 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.

[41] In late October 2013, masked settlers beat with a bat a Palestinian truck driver carrying goods ordered by the settlement and assaulted two IDF soldiers.

[43] In April 2015, Elad Yaakov Sela (25) from Bat Ayin, a corporal serving as an intelligence NCO in the Etzion Brigade, was indicted for espionage and leaking confidential information to extreme right-wing members of the community, to tip them off about forthcoming arrests in the wake of a price tag attack on a nearby mosque.

[9] The majority of the residents are religious-Zionist and Chardal Jews who adhere to a philosophy that combines spiritual religious life with organic agriculture, with Hasidic Breslov the predominant affiliation.

[9] Bat Ayin Orthodoxy is popularly known as "Chavakuk" (Hebrew, חבקו"ק), an acronym for Chabad, Breslov, (Rabbi Abraham Isaac) Kook, and (Shlomo) Carlebach.

[8]: 24  According to OCHA collected testimonies, settlers from Bat Ayin began planting trees in the area of the Ein al-Sijme spring, on Palestinian land leased to the Thawabta family, in the late 1990s.