The Jordan Valley Memorial strikingly overlooks Route 90. When we visited there were just a few cars with Palestinian number plates, whose occupants were picnicking in the plantations below the monument. Also known as the ‘Land of Pursuits Monument’ (אנדרטת ארץ המרדפים ) this magnificent memorial which is hidden in the Jordan valley beside the village of Petzael.
In the years following the 1967 Six Day War, frequent terrorist attacks were perpetrated against Israeli towns and villages by terrorists entering from Jordan, and the IDF regularly intercepted terrorists in the Jordan Valley. As a result of the infiltrations, the IDF created a new brigade stationed in the Jordan Valley, whose task was specifically to combat the terrorists from Jordan; it also developed new combat strategies to accommodate the difficult terrain. In the years following 1970, Jordan took steps to stop infiltrations into Israel.
The monument was created in 1972 by the Israeli sculptor Yigal Tumarkin using cement and steel. Tumarkin took various types of guns, heated them and shaped them into the form of an anit-aircraft cannon which rises to a height of 21 meters. The names of nearly 400 soldiers who fell in the Jordan Valley are engraved on the memorial.
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