Adamit Park is a JNF run park situated on Ramat Adamit and provides a magnificent view of the hilly landscapes of Western Galilee and Haifa Bay, including the precipitous slopes of Nahal Betzet and Nahal Namer (“leopard gully”). Some 400 metres above sea level, and part of a dolomite ridge just south of the Lebanese border, there are numerous caves including the famous "arch" or "rainbow" cave (מערת הקשת), a natural arch on the edge of the ridge formed by the roof of one of these caves collapsing. Amber and I went to investigate this arch, a popular rapelling spot which, it late turned out, Yonatan had visited with the scouts in 2015, and had a go dropping down a rope from the arch! Not for us, Amber and I decided, as we gingerly edged past.
Amber on the arch.
The keshet ("arch") cave from the Betzet valley below.
The arch gave rise to a local legend which tells of a band of brigands who made their living by robbing travellers passing through Nahal Betzet. One night, according to the legend, the Prophet Muhammad appeared to one of these highwaymen and warned him that if they did not mend their evil ways they would come to a bad end. In the morning the highwayman told his comrades of the vision he had seen, and asked them to forsake robbery and turn to farming instead. However, they were unconvinced. The penitent highwayman continued to pester his companions, who decided they had to rid themselves of him. They promised him that after robbing one last large caravan that was then on its way towards them, they would abandon their evil ways. They posted the penitent as a watchman at the mouth of the cave, whose roof was still intact in those days, and waited for the first opportunity to throw him down the cliff into the valley below. But at that moment, God in his wisdom caused the roof of the cave to collapse on the brigands, leaving intact only the strip of rock where the penitent stood, creating the arch that has given the cave the name it bears to this day.
There are several lookout monuments near the arch. Inaugurated in 2010, one of these is dedicated to the three soldiers – Shani Turgeman, Wasim Salah Nazal and Eyal Banin – killed on Israel’s Lebanese border in July 2006, when Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were kidnapped by Hezbollah, only a few kilometres away from this spot. The kidnapping sparked the 2006 Lebanon War. On 16 July 2008, the bodies of Goldwasser and Regev were returned to Israel in the 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange. Israeli officials claimed an examination of the bodies determined that the two reservists were killed during the ambush. The lookout was funded by Friends of KKL-JNF in Canada. Below are pictures of the monument and the view from it (hover your mouse over each picture to see the caption).
Right on the edge of the cliff, some 200 metres east of the arch cave, is the Amir lookout, in memory of Lieutenant Colonel Amir Meital, a Golani Patrol commander killed in 1988 in an attack on terrorist targets in Lebanon. Again, below are pictures of the monument and the amazing views from the lookout (hover your mouse over each picture to see the caption).
After our walk, and some freshly squeezed fruit juice purchased from a Druze vendor, we took a brief look at the ruins on the hill above the arch. Though not yet excavated, and now covered with the ruins of an Arab village cleared in the 1970s, whose cemetery there is still in use today, the site (known as Horvat Adamit in Hebrew or Khirbet Idmit in Arabic) is thought to be the site of the second Temple period Jewish town whose name is remembered in nearby modern Adamit. It is now situated within the JNF Adamit Park. Clay artefacts found at the site provide evidence of continued settlement from the Early Bronze Age until the Ottoman period. The remains of wine presses and olive presses can be observed nearby. I have not (yet) been able to find out any reliable information about the evacuation of Idmit, except that it appears to have been completed long after the 1948 war, in the 1970s. Hover your mouse over each picture in the slide show below to see the caption.
Eating onion pitta bought at nearby Shlomi - see related post.
