Avraham "Avri" Ran, dubbed the father of the “Hilltop Movement”, was born in 1946 in Nir Hen in British Mandate of Palestine. He and his wife Sharona, who had immigrated to Israel from the United States when she was four years old, both grew up in secular Jewish homes. They later became strictly religious. The couple has ten children.

In 1993, Ran moved with his family to Itamar. In 1997, he pitched his tent on a hill more than four kilometers east of Itamar. In 1998, his wife Sharona and the children joined him and they formally named their new settlement Giv'ot Olam (Hills of the World). The hilltop farm they built produces organic eggs and cheese from sheep's milk sold under the logo “Giv'ot Olam”.

In March 1995, Ran was arrested and charged with assaulting a Palestinian farmer who plowed a tractor onto land Ran claims as his own. He was ordered to be put in house arrest far from his home but soon disappeared only later to be captured and to be jailed for five months until the case closed. Months earlier, he had been convicted of attacking an Israeli-Arab and was sentenced to a six-month suspended sentence. In January 2006, the judge, ruling that she could not establish Ran's claim to the land, acquitted him and two other defendants, saying that the Palestinian's testimony was unreliable.

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