Jezreel Valley

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Jezreel Valley

The Jezreel Valley ; Hebrew: עמק יזרעאל‎, Emek Yizrael, also known as the Plain of Esdraelon. (Arabic: سهل زرعين ‎, Sahel Zir'in, or مرج بن عامر, Marj Ibn Amer - meadow of the son of Amr) is a large plain and inland valley in the north of Israel. It takes its name from the city of Jezreel, Arabic Zir'in (زرعين) located on a low hill on the southern edge and overlooking the valley. The Jezreel Valley is south of the Lower Galilee in the North District of Israel.

The Jezreel Valley is the location of a number of important settlements both ancient and modern. The ancient city of Megiddo is located in the south and west of the valley. The largest modern settlement in the Jezreel Valley is the city of Afula (Hebrew: עפולה‎, Arabic: عفولة‎), also known as the "Capital of the Valley". Afula may have been the ancient Bronze Age city of Ophrah according to the Old Testament. The Hebrew judge Gideon resided in Ophrah.

The Jezreel Valley was the site of many important historical battles including the first recorded battle in history. Some Christian believers consider that this will be the site of the future Battle of Armageddon marking the Second Coming.

1 Zionist settlement
2 Natural history in pre-historic times
3 In Biblical Times
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Zionist settlement

Between 1912 and 1925 the Lebanese Sursock family of Beirut (then under the French Mandate of Syria) sold their 80,000 acres of land in the Vale of Esdraelon to the American Zion Commonwealth. The Sursocks were paid nearly three quarters of a million pounds and "went happily back to Beirut". (The Sursuk family purchased the land in 1872 from the Ottoman gouvernment for about ₤20,000, less than 1/35th the price payed by the new Jewish owners)^{pg. 49}

However, 8,000 Palestinian fellahin (landless farmers) inhabitants in 22 Arab villages, suddenly lost the land they had worked on for the absentee landowners and while in addition to the purchase price, it was necessary to pay compensation to tenant farmers, for the most part they considered themselves evicted following these sales. In some cases, the farmers refused to leave their land, as in Afula (El-Ful).^[1]

Most villages were afterwards razed to the ground as the new Zionist owners decided it was forbidden for fellahins Arabs to remain as tenants on the land intended for Jewish labour, this was also due to the socialist ideaology of the Yishuv that hoped to avoid a creation of a Jewish landlord class exploiting a landless Arab pesantry.

As eviction orders increased over the following years, British police had to be used to expel the villagers from their homes. The dispossessed fellahin had to make their way to the coast to search for new work. Most ended up in shanty towns on the edges of Jaffa and Haifa.(Gilmore 1983, pp. 44-45.)

In the 1920s the American Zion Commonwealth founded the modern day city of Afula. The first moshav, Nahalal, was settled in this valley on September 11, 1921.

[edit] Natural history in pre-historic times

The valley was the channel by which the Dead Sea to the southeast of the valley connected to the Mediterranean Sea. Around two million years ago the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Rift Valley rose to such a degree that this connection was severed and periodic floods from the Mediterranean Sea were interrupted.

See also the Dead Sea.

[edit] In Biblical Times

In the Bible, the Valley of Jezreel lies to the north of Jezreel between the ridges of Gilboa and Moreh, an offshoot of Esdraelon, running east to the Jordan River (Joshua 17:16; Judges 6:33; Hosea 1:5). It was the scene of the signal victory gained by the Israelites under Gideon over the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the "children of the east" (Judg. 6:3). Two centuries after this victory, the Israelites were here defeated by the Philistines. Saul and Jonathan with the followers of the army of Israel fell (1 Samuel 31:1-6).

This name later grew to refer to the entire plain of Esdraelon. Only this plain of Jezreel and the one north of Lake Huleh were then accessible to the chariots of the Canaanites (compare 2 Kings 9:21; 10:15).

[edit] References

Nevill Barbour: Nisi Dominus: A Survey of the Palestine Controversy. George G. Harrap, London 1946, pp. 117-118
Polk, Stamler, Asfour: Backdrop to Tragedy: The Struggle for Palestine. Beacon Press, Boston, 1957, pp. 237-238.
The above two books are quoted in David Gilmour: Dispossessed: the Ordeal of the Palestinians. Sphere Books, Great Britain, 1983, pp. 44-45.