monastery at Latrun, courtesy, Wikipedia |
In the Hebrew Bible, the site that became Latrun was allotted
to the tribal territory of Dan, in the southern portion of the territory near
the border with Ephraim. In the 2nd century BCE, Judah Maccabee established his military camp here in preparation for
battle with the Seleucid Greeks
who occupied the land. The Jewish victory in what was later called
the Battle of Emmaus led
to greater Jewish autonomy under Hasmonean rule over the next century. Latrun was
a Roman base during the first Roman-Jewish War (66-73) and the Bar-Kokhba Rebellion (132-135). Since the
Byzantine period (395-636), the site and the surrounding area became abandoned
and uncultivated except for an occasional military fort that would be built by
a foreign power.
In the 1880s, the Jewish
Batato brothers from Jerusalem, purchased a hotel in the area from a Lebanese
agent of the Thomas Cook travel company and renamed it the “Maccabee Hotel”. In December 1890, a monastery was established nearby by French, German and Flemish
monks of the Trappist Order. Shortly
afterward, the monks bought the hotel together with two-hundred
hectares of land. Later, they established a vineyard using knowledge gained in
France as well as advice from an expert in the employ of Baron Edmond James de
Rothschild from the Carmel-Mizrahi Winery in Rishon l’Tzion. During World War I, the monastic community was
expelled by the Ottoman Turks and the buildings were pillaged. It was rebuilt
in 1926.
Following the 1936–39
Arab riots, the British authorities built at Latrun, a police
fort, named Tegart fort after
its designer. The site was chosen due to its strategic significance,
particularly its dominant position above the Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem road. Many
members of the Yishuv who had resisted the
British administration were imprisoned at the site’s detention camp. Moshe Sharett, later Israel's second Prime
Minister, and several other members of the Jewish Agency's Executive Committee, were held at
Latrun for several months in 1946.
During the War of
Independence, the Arab army of Transjordan, from their vantage point at Latrun which
was handed over to them by the British, had blocked the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road,
shelling Israeli motorists below and effectively imposing a siege on the Jews in Jerusalem.
On May 24, 1948, ten days after the official Israeli
Declaration of Independence and the Arab onslaughts against
Israel which followed, the Arab-occupied fort was finally assaulted by the combined
forces of Israel's newly created 7th Armored Brigade,
and a battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade. The
assault, codenamed Operation Bin Nun Alef, was
unsuccessful, and the Jews sustained heavy casualties. Ariel Sharon, then a platoon commander, was
wounded along with many of his soldiers. On May 31, a second attack against the
fort, Operation Bin Nun Bet,
also failed, although the outer defenses had been breached. Therefore, to
circumvent the blocked road, a makeshift camouflaged road through the seemingly
impassable mountains of the Jerusalem Corridor was constructed under the
command of David “Mickey” Marcus. This
bypassed the main routes overlooked by Latrun and was nicknamed the Burma Road. By June 10, the road was fully
operational, and it eventually put an end to the Arab blockade. Meanwhile, the Arabs
destroyed the Latrun water pumping
station which provided water to Jerusalem. In response, the Israelis built an auxiliary water pipe-line
of small capacity along the Burma Road which provided a minimum amount of
water. After Operation Danny,
Israeli forces anticipated a Jordanian counterattack, possibly from
Latrun, but King Abdullah remained within the bounds of the tacit agreement
made with the Jewish Agency and kept his troops at Latrun from attacking.
In the 1949 Armistice
Agreements, the fort remained under Jordanian
Arab occupation surrounded by a no man's land, and Jordan was not to disrupt Israeli travelers
using this road; in practice however, there were constant sniper attacks which
were approved of by the United Nations. In the Six-Day War in 1967, Latrun was liberated by Israel
and the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road to Jerusalem was re-opened and made safe
for travel.
The village Neve Shalom/Wahat es Salam was the
brainchild of Father Bruno Hussar
who was born and raised a Jew in Egypt until his conversion to Christianity
while studying in France. In 1970, he purchased 120 acres of land from the
monastery but it wasn’t until 1978 that the first families moved in on a
permanent basis. They were 4 Israeli Jewish families and 1 Arab. Other people
followed them including Major Wellesley Aron, grandfather of the Israeli
singer David Broza.
Today, in addition to the above mentioned, the Latrun area also contains the park Mini Israel, with scale models of historic buildings around Israel, and the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration (ICSBM), which is adjacent to Yad La-Shiryon Memorial (built on the site of the Tegart Fort). Canada Park is nearby to the east.
No comments:
Post a Comment