Wadi Ara (; ) or Nahal 'Iron (), is a valley and its surrounding area in Israel populated mainly by Arab Israelis. The area is also known as the "Northern Triangle".
Wadi Ara is located northwest of the Green Line, in the Haifa District. Highway 65 runs through the wadi. The ancient town of biblical fame, Tel Megiddo, known from Revelation 16:16 as Armageddon, used to guard its northern exit during much of the Bronze Age and .
Geography
Wadi Ara is a 20 km
wadi (valley) in northern Israel that begins at the meeting point of
Samaria, the
Menashe Heights, and the
Sharon plain. The riverbed begins near
Umm al-Fahm and runs southwest on the boundary between the Manasseh hills and the Umm al-Fahm hills. Approximately 1 km west of the Border Patrol intersection on Highway 65, the wadi opens into the Sharon plain, and becomes a tributary of the
Hadera Stream, south of
Talmei Elazar and north of
Tel Zeror.
History
Wadi Ara is part of the ancient historical route
Via Maris, connecting what is now the Israeli coastal plain with the
Jezreel Valley and, in a wider sense,
Egypt in the west with
Syria and
Mesopotamia in the east.
Chalcolithic
The site of
En Esur has a main occupational level from the Early
Chalcolithic period, when a large village with a temple stood at the well-watered site.
Early Bronze Age
Also at
En Esur, a walled city covered the site during the Early Bronze Age, an exceptionally early and populous urban centre for the Southern Levant.
[
]
Late Bronze Age: Thutmose III
In the Late Bronze Age, the Egyptian king, Thutmose III (r. 1479-1425 BC), used the route, then called Aruna, to surprise his enemies, and take control of Tel Megiddo. According to information from a stela from Armant, the king of Kadesh advanced his army to Megiddo.[Steindorff, George; and Seele, Keith. When Egypt Ruled the East. p.53-4. University of Chicago, 1942.] Thutmose marched his troops through the coastal plain as far as Yavne, then inland to Yehem, a small city near Megiddo.[Redford, Donald B. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. p. 156-7. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1992.] A ridge of mountains jutting inland from Mount Carmel stood between Thutmose and Megiddo, and he had three potential routes to take.
Ottoman period
Egyptians came in Wadi 'Ara as a result of waves of immigration during the first half of the 19th century, and the area currently features a number of villages with a substantial population of Egyptian descent.
1948-49 war
Captured by Arab League forces under the command of Iraqi officer, Captain Khaleel Jassim, in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, it was ceded to Israel in exchange for territory south of Hebron in the 1949 Israel-Jordan armistice agreement. In March 1949, as the Jordanian army replaced the Iraqi forces, three Israeli brigades moved into positions in Operation Shin-Tav-Shin. Following the operation, Israel renegotiated the ceasefire line in the Wadi Ara area of the Northern West Bank in an agreement reached on 23 March 1949 and incorporated into the General Armistice Agreement. These 15 villages were ceded to Israel.[Avi Shlaim, "The Politics of Partition; King Abdullah, the Zionists, and Palestine 1921-1951", Oxford University Press, Revised Edition 2004 pp. 299, 312]
Educational institutions
Hand in Hand – Bridge over the Wadi is a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school located in an Arab village in Wadi Ara. It was established in 2004 with 100 students in kindergarten through third grade. In 2008, classes were offered up to sixth grade and enrollment increased to 200, split evenly between Arabs and Jews.[ Arab and Israeli Peace, at Least for Children, New York Times]
Proposed land exchange
The area has come under political attention as some Israeli politicians such as Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu party have brought up Lieberman Plan to the sovereignty and administration of the Palestinian Authority for a future Palestinian state. In return the Palestinian Authority would transfer specific large Israeli settlement "blocs" within the West Bank east of the Green Line to Israel. According to politicians who support this land-swap, Israel would ensure and secure itself as a primarily Jewish state. However, many politicians within the Knesset disagree and believe it would only decrease Israel's Arab population by a mere 10%, while most Israeli Arabs object to trading Israeli citizenship for Palestinian citizenship.[ Israeli Arabs and the vote Uri Dromi]
Localities in Wadi Ara
Arab
Jewish
Historical localities
Ancient
-
El-Ahwat, possibly the site of biblical Harosheth Haggoyim, a Canaanite fortress and archaeological site
Pre-1948 Palestine
See also
-
Egged bus 841 massacre
-
Menashe Regional Council
-
Triangle (Israel)
