There are three bridges dating from different eras at Old Gesher. This one is from the Roman Byzantine period. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)
The purpose of this blog is not to write about places I haven't been, but this piece is the exception that proves that rule! For today, having innocently "liked" some beuatiful aerial pictures of the now green and flooded Jordan river - following last week's rain - I got searching online to find out where the spot was. This post is the result of my researches, and I hope one day to visit and then supplement it with a further blog.
You can see one of the posted pictures which caught my eye here (credit: משקמים את הירדן-sadly the picture is no more as of 2019, but you can get the same idea from this one). It shows an aerial view of the River Jordan, looking south, at "Old Gesher." Jordan is on the left, there is a ruined Roman bridge in the foreground with a similarly ruined Turkish railway bridge behind (still with some wagons on it). To the right is a restored compound containing the remains of an Ottoman Khan and former British police station. You can see the border fence on the Israeli side of the river (the actual border runs down the centre of the river).
Old Gesher is located in Israel’s Jordan Valley, near the current kibbutz Gesher, (not to be confused with kibbutz Gesher Haziv), near to where the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers meet. It has always been a place of strategic importance on the Syrian-African Rift, and in the last decade has become a tourist attraction on the bank of the Jordan River. Already, the so-called “Island of Peace” or Naharayim Park – an area ceded to Jordan with the 1994 peace agreement but leased back under a 25-year, automatically renewable lease – is accessible to Israeli tourists, on presentation of their identity cards to the Jordanian guards at the border crossing. And as I write, an exciting new plan is underway to create the proposed Israeli-Jordanian Jordan River Peace Park (JRPP), incorporating the Island of Peace together with the Gesher bridges and compound. This will be the first peace park in the Middle East.
The cross-border park will be accessible from both Jordan and Israel, without the need for visas. As well as restoring and preserving everything described in this blog, the park will include a new visitor centre and ecolodges. Just this year the project moved a step closer, with a team of architects from the Yale School of Architecture’s Urban Design Workshop (YUDW) and Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design holding a a three-day intensive workshop on site in May 2014, to develop detailed designs and recommendations for the park. You can also find out more at the website of another of the partners in this project, Friends of the Earth Middle East.
Naharayim/Island of Peace
Under a unique agreement reached in 1927 with Emir Abdullah of Transjordan, Pinchas Rutenberg, founder of the Palestine Electric Company, was able to build the company’s main “Tel Or” power station at Naharayim (which means "two rivers"), 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. 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.
The canals and dams built by Rutenberg created a man-made island. 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" (see introduction, above). In fact, Peace Island is where the special peace agreements between Israel and Jordan were signed in October of that year.
On March 13, 1997, the Feurst school from Beit Shemesh was on a class trip to the Jordan Valley, and Island of Peace. Jordanian soldier Ahmed Daqamseh opened fire at the schoolchildren, killing seven girls aged 13 or 14 and badly wounding 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. Immediately after the incident in which seven girls from Beit Shemesh were killed, King Hussein posted Bedouin soldiers, loyal to him, as a tribute to the State of Israel, and today the border pass to the Island of Peace is manned by the King’s Bedouin soldiers.
Those interested in seeing the real Naharayim (which was inaccessible for 46 years) may schedule a visit at the Island of Peace by calling in advance. As well as seeing the canals and dams and impressive power plant built by Rutenberg, “the old man from Naharayim", one can see where the Rutenberg villa stood – the “White House” in which Golda Meyerson met with Emir Abdullah. The villa also served as a place for visitors and where Israeli festivals were celebrated by the residents of Tel Or. One can also see the train station, built in the Bauhaus style – the only station built in this style outside of Tel Aviv – which Rutenberg built for workers. It is the lowest train station in the world at more than 800 feet below sea level.
Old Gesher
At Old Gesher are several historic sites that have been damaged in the past and await restoration. One of them is 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. The second site is the Mamluk era Khan (a roadside inn), built during the 14th century on the ancient road that crossed the Jordan River at this point. 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.
Just downstream from the Roman bridge is the Turkish railway bridge that was used by the Muslim pilgrim caravans on their way to Mecca between 1904 and 1948 – it carried the famous Valley Railway, a branch line of the Hejaz railway, from Haifa to Damascus. A third bridge was built by the British in 1925 and carried a paved road that served the bus route between Jordan and Israel. Also visible are the remains of a Turkish customs house and an old British police station.
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. 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. Initially, they walked for four hours to a nearby settlement and were later taken to safety, in an abandoned monastery in Haifa. Ultimately the original settlement of Gesher was destroyed.
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.