Hundreds of people on Sunday marked three years since the establishment of the Oz VeGaon nature preserve in Judea, a site established by Women in Green in memory of the three Israeli teens who were abducted and murdered by Hamas terrorists in June 2014.

Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Women in Green's Nadia Matar said, “I am very moved. I almost have tears in my eyes. Three years ago, this forest was a place where no Jews were walking. It was illegally taken over by Arabs. It was a garbage dump, there were Arab drug dealers here.”

After the murder of the three teens – Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrah – Women in Green established the nature preserve as “a Zionist response” to the murders.

With the help of Jews from Israel and around the world, they turned the area from a dump to “a place that says that Zionism is alive and well,” continued Matar.

“Three years after that fateful day, here we are with hundreds and hundreds of children. We hear the music and the laughter of children. We hear that the land of Israel is ours, and we're doing this with the World Zionist Organization and the Zionist Council,” she added.

“The Zionist response is to build, to have sovereignty, to say that this land is ours.”