HADERA

Hadera, courtesy, Wikipedia

Hadera is a city located in the Haifa District of Israel, situated midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa with a population of over 95,000. Since the 1990s, the city's population has also included a high proportion of immigrants arriving notably from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. Hadera lies along Israel's two main north-south highways – 2 and 4 – linking Tel Aviv to Haifa. It also lies along two main Israel Railways lines: the Coastal Line and the nowadays freight-only Eastern Line. Hadera’s railway station is located in the west of the city and is on the Tel Aviv suburban line which runs between Binyamina and Ashkelon. All this made the city an important junction for all coastal bus transportation after 1948 and into the 1950s.

In the Biblical period, the site of present day Hadera was part of the territory of the Israelite tribe of western Menasheh. Since the Arab occupation in the 7^th century, the area slowly gave way to swampland, in which state in remained until the Jews returned at the end of the 19^th century. In 1883, Yehoshua Hankin, acting on behalf of various Russian Jewish national societies from Latvia and Lithuania, purchased 6,500 acres of land from the owner, Selim Khuri, a Christian effendi. The site was near the Arab settlement of El-Chuderah, south of the ancient town Cæsarea, above the mouth of the Nahr el-Mefdshir, which flows into the Wâdi el-Chuderah (Hadera Stream). This was the largest purchase of land in Israel up to that time. The first settlers – ten families and four guards – came to the site on the holiday of Tu Bishvat, 1891, and lived in a building known as the Khan near what is today Hadera's main synagogue. Baron Rothschild's surveyor, Yitzhak Goldhar, claimed that Hadera was founded on the site of the former town called Gedera of Caesarea, the ancient Gador as mentioned in the Mishnah supplementary writing of the Tosefta Shevi'it, ch. 7. Archaeologist Benjamin Mazar preferred to locate Gador at Tel Gador on the coast south of Hadera’s Giv'at Olga neighborhood.

The first settlers drained the vast malarial swamps and planted groves of citrus fruit and fields of grain. Old tombstones in the local cemetery reveal that out of a population of 540, 210 died of malaria. But the people persevered and by the early twentieth century, Hadera had become the regional economic center. Beginning in 1909, Hashomer guards kept watch over the fields to prevent incursions by the neighboring Bedouin. In 1913, the settlement included forty households, as well as fields and vineyards, stretching over 30,000 dunams. The village of Kfar Brandeis, named after the chief justice of the US Supreme Court was established south of Hadera in 1927 but became part of the city in the 50s.

Land disputes in the area were resolved by the 1930s, and the population had grown to 2,002 in 1931. The Hapoel Hadera Football Club was founded during this time. This followed the founding of the Maccabi Hadera Footbal Club established in 1914. Free schooling was introduced in the city in 1937 in all schools apart from those operated by the Histadrut labor union. Hadera's population increased dramatically in 1948 as immigrants flocked to the country. Most of the newcomers were from Europe, but 40 Yemenite families also settled there.

In 1952, Hadera was declared a city, with jurisdiction over an area of 53,000 dunams. The next year, Israel's first paper mill opened. Financed by investors from Israel, United States, Brazil and Australia, the mill was designed to meet all of Israel's paper needs.

Also during the 50s, new neighborhoods were built, among them Givat Olga on the coast, and Beit Eliezer in the east. The Hillel Yaffe Medical Center had its beginnings in 1957. It was named after a medical pioneer in Israel, who made Aliyah from Ukraine in 1891. Hadera is also the location of the Orot Rabin Power Plant, Israel's largest power station. In 1987, the Democratic School and the Technoda Technological Education and Science Center were established.

In the 1990s, large numbers of Russian and Ethiopian immigrants settled in Hadera. Long considered a safe place by its residents, the city was jolted by several acts of terrorism, including the killing of 4 civilians when a terrorist opened fire on pedestrians at a bus stop on October 28, 2001. Soon thereafter, 6 people were massacred at a Bat Mitzvah. In 2005, just 1 month after the Zionist expulsion of Jews from Gaza, and with Zionist approval, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a falafel stand killing seven civilians and injuring 55, 5 in severe condition. However, since the construction of the nearby Security Barrier, the frequency of such incidents has dropped drastically. On August 4, 2006 during the Second Lebanon War, three rockets fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah hit Hadera. Hadera is 50 miles south of the Lebanese border and this marked the farthest point inside Israel hit by Hezbollah’s rocket barrage.

In the 2000s, the city center was rejuvenated with the construction of a high-tech business park and the world's largest desalination plant. Nahal Hadera Park and Hasharon Park are located on the city’s outskirts. Hot water gushing from the Hadera power plant draws schools of hundreds of sandbar and dusky sharks every winter. Scientists are researching the rare phenomenon, which is unknown in the vicinity. It is speculated that the water, which is ten degrees warmer than the rest of the Mediterranean may be the attraction.