Route 90 Road trip - טיול בכביש 90 - Gesher & Naharayim - גשר ונהריים‎

These two places are intimately connected in a story of power - both political and hydro-electrical - which for a time transcended borders and foretold a peace which was only formally established almost seventy years later, which was planned to be immortalized at the site of the story - the Island of Peace (אי השלום) - whose calm was shattered within three years by the massacre of seven Israeli children by a Jordanian soldier. And even as I write this post, the perpetrator has been released - early - from his prison in Jordan to widespread joy in that country with whom Israel has had a peace treaty since 1994.

Uniquely - for this blog is about places I have visited - I blogged about Naharayim and Gesher before I had a chance to see the places for themselves. Now I am putting that right!

Naharayim

Naharayim (נהריים‎‎ literally "Two rivers") or Baqoura (الباقورة‎‎) is a site on the border between Israel and Jordan where the Yarmouk River flows into the Jordan River.

Under a unique agreement reached in 1927 with Emir Abdullah of Transjordan, Pinchas Rutenberg, pictured right [credit: creative commons; Israel Electric Corporation (חברת החשמל לישראל)] founder of the Palestine Electric Company (PEC), was able to build the company’s main “Tel Or” power station at Naharayim, just north of Gesher. The agreement gave the PEC (which later became the Israel Electric Corporation) rights to use 6,000 dunams of land under Transjordanian control.

Rutenberg had submitted a plan to the Zionist movement for the establishment of 13 hydroelectric power stations and securing financing for the plan. He was awarded a concession from the British Mandatory government to generate electricity, first from the Yarkon River near Tel Aviv, and shortly thereafter, utilizing all the running water in western Palestine. The Naharayim site was chosen for the strong water flow and the possibility of regulating the flow through storage in the Sea of Galilee during the winter rainy season and release of the water reserves in the summer. Construction began in 1927 and continued for five years, providing employment for 3,000 workers.

As part of the project three dams were built and, in 1932, the Naharayim plant – designed by architect Orel from Haifa, one of the foremost architects of the 'Bauhaus' architectural style in Israel – began supplying electricity on both sides of the border, continuing until it was blown up in 1948.

Above: The Naharayim power plant, with Tel Or in the background. Below: Aerial photo of the power station at Naharayim in 1937 [credit: public domain; Zalman Schocken - National Library of Israel]

Above: Aerial photo of the power station at Naharayim in 1937 [credit: public domain; Zalman Schocken - National Library of Israel]. Below: Power Plant c 1933 [credit: public domain; American Colony (Jerusalem)]

The canals and dams built by Rutenberg created a man-made island, today known as the Island of Peace.

Canals and sluices built by Rutenberg

Rutenberg built Tel Or for the workers at the power plant, as well as a villa for himself – the “White House” – in which Golda Meir met with Emir Abdullah in the days before Israeli independence, in an attempt by the Jewish leadership to head off Jordanian participation in the war. The villa also served as a place for visitors and where Israeli festivals were celebrated by the residents of Tel Or. Today the shells of the workers' houses remain, along with the train station, built in the Bauhaus style in 1937 – the only station built in this style outside of Tel Aviv – which is the lowest train station in the world at more than 800 feet below sea level.

Left: Naharayim Train Station, 1930s [credit: Israel Electric Corporation Archive]. Right: Naharayim Train Station today.

The power plant was opened by Emir Abdullah in 1932.

Ruttenberg watches Emir Abdullah start the turbines at the Naharayim power plant [credit: public domain; 1932, Library of Congress]

On 27 April 1948, the Haganah took control of the Gesher police station, a Tegart fort that had been evacuated by the British. The Arab Legion, still under British control at the time, ordered them to evacuate it. Haganah refused and, in violation of international law and a November 1947 agreement between Meir and Abdullah, the Arab Legion's 4th Battalion launched a mortar and artillery attack on the Gesher police fort and nearby Kibbutz Gesher that same day. Both troops exchanged fire during the three ensuing days until, on the morning of April 29, a Legion officer demanded the evacuation of the fort, but was turned down. After protests to the British Mandate administration, the shelling was halted, and Abdullah was reprimanded for "aggression against Palestine territory." The Arab Legion was ordered by his HQ to return to their barracks. Many of the kibbutz buildings were destroyed, and the attack paved the way for the pan-Arab invasion of Mandatory Palestine.

Gesher police fort

The settlement of 120 people was under attack and 50 children were holed-up in a six by two meter bunker, for 30 hours until they were eventually evacuated in the stealth of night. In April–May 1948, 50 children of the kibbutz were evacuated. Initially, they walked for four hours to a nearby settlement, but were later taken to safety, first to the Ravitz Hotel on the Carmel, and then to the abandoned 19th-century French monastery on the grounds of Rambam hospital in the Bat Galim neighborhood of Haifa, where they lived for the next 22 months.

An Iraqi brigade next invaded at Naharayim on May 15, 1948, in an unsuccessful attempt to take the kibbutz and fort. The power plant was occupied and looted by the Iraqi forces and, for seven days, beginning on May 15, 1948, the kibbutz and Tegart fort were attacked using armored cars and aerial bombing. To prevent Iraqi tanks from attacking Jewish villages in the Jordan Valley, the sluice gates of the Degania dam were opened. The rush of water, which deepened the river at this spot, was instrumental in blocking the Iraqi-Jordanian incursion. But although the defenders repulsed the Iraqis, inflicting heavy losses, the kibbutz was destroyed during combat. Ultimately the original settlement of Gesher was destroyed and, after the war, the kibbutz was rebuilt about 1 km to the west.

Land along the Jordan River's alluvial slopes and floor bed had been under Jewish ownership before the establishment of the State of Israel, even before Pinchas Rutenberg signed the agreement with King Abdullah I of Jordan in 1927 to build the hydroelectric power station at Naharayim. In 1994, Israel ceded the area to Jordan as part of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace but, whilst retaining sovereignty, Jordan agreed to lease it back so the Israeli farmers from Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'acov could continue to cultivate the land. Farming continues under a 25-year, automatically renewable lease. In fact, the so-called Island of Peace is where the special peace agreements between Israel and Jordan were signed in October of that year.

Today the remains of the power station are part of the proposed Jordan River Peace Park on the Island of Peace on the Israel-Jordan border, an area where Israelis and Jordanians may enter without passports or visas. The project is spearheaded by the trilateral NGO EcoPeace Middle East, headquartered in Tel Aviv, Bethlehem and Amman, whose map for the site is reproduced right. In the meantime, the area is operated by kibbutz Ashdot Ya’acov and according to the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, "the area is under Jordan's sovereignty with Israeli private land ownership rights". A gate was established to enable Israeli tourists to visit the park without a visa or passport, on presentation of their identity cards to the Jordanian guards at the border crossing.

However it has not been entirely peaceful at the site. On March 13, 1997, children from a high school in Beit Shemesh were on a class trip to the Jordan Valley and Island of Peace when Jordanian soldier, Ahmed Daqamseh, opened fire on them, killing seven girls aged 13-14 (Sivan Fathi, 13, of Tzelafon, Karen Cohen, 14, of Beit Shemesh, Ya'ala Me'iri, 13, of Beit Shemesh, Shiri Badayev, 14, of Beit Shemesh, Natali Alkalai, 13, of Beit Shemesh, Adi Malka, 13, of Beit Shemesh, and Nirit Cohen, 13, of Beit Shemesh) and badly wounding six others. King Hussein of Jordan came to Beit Shemesh to extend his condolences and ask forgiveness in the name of his country, a step which was seen as both touching and courageous. Daqamseh was convicted by a military tribunal to several consecutive life sentences (the death penalty was not considered because the court ruled he was mentally unstable). Despite regular protests in Jordan for the early release of Daqamseh, this never happened, but he was released in March 2017, as I wrote this post, having served 20 years. There was, sadly, much celebration at his release in Jordan and amongst Palestinians. There is a memorial to the children at the entrance to Naharayim Park at Ashdot Ya'akov Ihud.

Left: the Jordanian border gate on the Island of Peace

Explanatory board (above) and memorial (below) to the Peace Island Massacre

Old Gesher

Kibbutz Gesher (now Old Gesher) was founded in 1939 on lands bought with the help of Edmond de Rothschild, local members of the youth movement HaNo'ar HaOved and a group of young Jews from Germany. They were later joined by Jewish immigrants from Poland, Germany, Austria and additional Palestinian Jews. The kibbutz grew up near the Naharayim bridge as a Tower and stockade settlement.

The site of the kibbutz was a khan from the Mamluk period to the late 18th or early 19th century called Jisr el-Majami' (bridge of the meeting), one of the earliest khans in the Galilee and a major crossroads where the north–south Bet She’an–Damascus road intersected the east–west road which led from the Gilead through the Sirin Plateau. The Khan controlled an important passage and provided services for the caravans that passed through it but, in 1837, it was destroyed in an earthquake that struck the region, and over the years it was covered with soil. Some of the original kibbutz buildings lay within the ruins.

The remains of the khan, which is on the Israeli side of the river Jordan, but is beyond the border fence, is nevertheless accessible with guides from the Old Gesher museum.

There are three bridges at the site, hence the name Gesher, meaning "bridge" – an ancient bridge whose base was built during the Roman Byzantine era, and built over later, during the Crusader and Mamluk eras in the 12th century CE, an Ottoman railway bridge, just downstream, serving the famous Emek (Valley) Railway, the Haifa-Dera'a segment of the Hejaz Railway, and a British Mandate road bridge serving the Haifa-Baghdad highway, built in 1925. The railway bridge was used by the Muslim pilgrim caravans on their way to Mecca between 1904 and 1948. Also visible are the remains of a Turkish customs house and an old British Tegart police station.

Left: the Roman Byzantine bridge [credit: creative commons; אילת לב ארי שלי Pikiwiki Israel]; Centre: the Ottoman railway bridge; Right: the British Mandate road bridge.

As mentioned above, in April 1948, Old Gesher was the first settlement to withstand an attack by the Arab Legion, and in May of that year it was also the focal point of an Iraqi attack. Ultimately the original settlement of Gesher was destroyed and, after the war, the kibbutz was rebuilt about 1 km to the west.

During the War of Attrition between 1967 and 1970 the new kibbutz was attacked with bombs, mines and gunfire by PLO Arab Palestinian fighters. In the 1990s it underwent privatization while preserving the collective model in the areas of education, health, culture and leisure.

After the peace agreement between Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan was signed in 1994, the kibbutz established a museum on the original site at Old Gesher, documenting the history of Gesher and the power station at Naharayim.

The old site has been transformed into a place that tells the story of the establishment of Jewish settlements in this part of the country, since the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly during the War of Independence. There is an audio-visual display, telling the story of the hydroelectric plant that was powered by the water of the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers, giving light to the towns and villages of the area in the beginning of the 20th century, as well as a hike that follows the trail of the pioneers, living in the Kibbutz nearby.

The slide show below shows pictures of Old Gesher and the museum along with other pictures related to Naharayim. Below that is a map showing the sites mentioned.