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| The Huleh Valley, Israel, courtesy, Wikipedia |
"The waters of Merom", as it is called in the Book of Joshua, is given as the name of the place at which the hosts of the peoples of northern Canaan assembled to meet Joshua and the Israelite warriors. The commander-in-chief of the Canaanite forces was Jabin, King of Hazor. The only hint as to Joshua's method of attack is the statement that “he came against the enemy suddenly, and fell upon them”. This probably indicates a night march and early morning attack. The Israelites “smote them, put them to flight, and pursued them in every direction. Their horses were hamstrung, and their chariots were burned, while their cities and the whole country were laid waste”. After these battles and the ensuing Israelite victories, the area in and around Lake Huleh became allotted to the tribe of Naphtali. In the 8th century BCE, the lake was captured by the Neo-Assyrian Empire's armies under Tiglath-Pileser III (reigned 745–727 BC) and its inhabitants were driven away. After the Babylonian Captivity (538 BCE) and later in the Hellenistic and Hasmonean periods, when the Jews resettled in the area, the growing of rice became a major agricultural industry.
Over the centuries, however, Lake
Huleh became marshland and also a breeding ground for mosquitoes carrying malaria. It wasn’t until
the 1830s that Arab migrants, mainly refugees, established permanent
settlements in the area that were conducive to the swamp environment. The first modern Jewish settlement in the Huleh
Valley, Yesud HaMa'ala on the western shore
of the lake, was established in 1883 during the First Aliyah. Since then, plans, and several attempts, were made,
either by Jews or the Turks or the British, to drain the nearby swamps and turn
the area over to agriculture. In 1934, during the British Mandate, the Palestine
Land Development Company was
awarded this
concession by the Mandatory government and drew up plans to drain and irrigate the valley
which brought scientific expeditions to the area. This activity was forced to
be suspended at the outbreak of the Arab riots and World War II after that. It
wasn’t resumed until after Israeli independence.
In 1951, the draining of the
swamps began, lasting seven years and carried out by the Jewish National Fund
and aided by the Construction Aggregate Company of Chicago. During this time, the Israeli government invited John
Zuckerman, an agriculturalist from California, to visit Israel as advisor on a
project. The Syrian Arabs, for their part, often interfered with the
execution of the project by repeatedly opening fire on work crews along the Jordan course and by obtaining from the
UN a stipulation that the dredged earth and stone be deposited on the western
river bank only (although the eastern bank was Israeli territory as well). But
in spite of the usual problems with the surrounding Arabs, the draining was successful,
achieved by two main engineering operations: the deepening and widening of the
Jordan River downstream; and two newly-dug peripheral
canals diverting the Jordan at the north of the valley. Though perceived at
the time as a great national achievement for Israel, with the advent of the
modern environmental movement, it became evident that the transformation of the
swamp into agricultural land involved significant trade-offs and had effects on
the ecosystem that had not been perceived previously such as the extinction of
the unique endemic fauna
of the lake. In fact, this concern was the impetus for the creation of
the Society
for the Protection of Nature in Israel in 1953. Due to the activities of this Society, in 1963, a small
area of recreated papyrus swampland in the southwest of the valley was set
aside and thus, it became the country's first nature reserve,
the Huleh Nature Reserve. The next year, it was officially inaugurated and today,
it is listed by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, as a Wetland
of International Importance. In the early 1990s part of the valley was
flooded again in the wake of heavy rains. Therefore, it was decided to develop
the surrounding area and leave the flooded area intact. The new site, the Agmon HaHula, has become the second
home for thousands of migrating birds in the autumn and spring. In November
2011 the Huleh painted frog, classified as extinct since 1996 by the IUCN as a
result of the marsh drainage, reappeared to park patrollers. The reappearance
was confirmed by the Israel
Nature and Parks Authority.
Today, several communities have
been established in the area since the establishment of Yesud Hamaala – Hulata (1937), Ramot Naphtali (1945, located adjacent to the Nebi Yesha Forest), Yiftah
(1948), Sde Eliezer (1950), and Gonen (1951).
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