JERUSALEM CORRIDOR (PROZDOR YERUSHALAYIM)

landscape, Jerusalem Corridor region, courtesy, Wikipedia

The Jerusalem Corridor is a mountainous geographical district in Israel stretching from Jerusalem on the east to the Shephelah on the west. The largest towns in this area are Beit Shemesh, Mevasseret Zion, Abu Ghosh, Tzur Hadassah and Kiryat Ye'arim (the Biblical Beth Yearim). Today, the Corridor comes under the jurisdiction of the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council.

In Biblical times, this area straddled the border between the Israelite tribal territories of Judah and Dan. Several major Biblical events occurred here. The town of Zorah was the birthplace of the judge Samson who, according to the Biblical narrative, began to be agitated by the Spirit of God in the locality of Mahaneh Dan (the camp of Dan), the district "between Zorah and Eshtaol" (Judges 13:25). After his death in Gaza, Samson's body was brought back for burial in the tomb of his father Manoah between Zorah and Eshtaol (Judges 16:31).

The city of Beit Shemesh was set aside as one of the 13 Kohanic cities for the priests of the tribe of Levi. It is also mentioned in the Book of I Samuel as being the first city encountered by the Ark of the Covenant on its way back from Philistia after having been captured by the Philistines in battle (1 Samuel 6:12-21). Afterwards, it was transferred to the nearby town of Beth Yearim where it remained for about 60 years. In the meantime, David fought Goliath in the Valley of Elah. When he became king of Israel, he transferred the Ark from Beth Yearim to Jerusalem, his capital. In 2 Kings 14, Beit Shemesh is again mentioned as being the site of the battle between King Amaziah of the southern Kingdom of Judah and King Jehoash of the northern Kingdom of Israel. In 701 BCE, Sennacherib, ruler of the Assyrian Empire, destroyed much of Judah resulting in the abandonment of Beit Shemesh, but there seems to have been a later attempt by a group of Judahites at resettling the city, judging by the archaeological discovery of the refurbishing of the water reservoir. In 586 BCE, at the start of the Babylonian Captivity, the inhabitants of Beit Shemesh were exiled. After the Captivity and during the Second Temple period, there was no lasting revival of the city, as opposed to many other places in the vicinity such as Beit Guvrin, Maresha, and others.

The Jerusalem Corridor also figures prominently in the New Testament as the location of Beth HaKerem, the birthplace of John the Baptist and the abode of his parents Elizabeth and Zechariah, according to Christian tradition. This town was renamed as Ein Karem under the Arab occupation in the 7^th century. Al-Tamimi, the Arab physician (d. 990), mentions an old custom of the Jews of Ein Karem to make wreaths from the boughs (branches) of a wild plant belonging to the mint family (Lamiaceae) during the Jewish holiday of Shavu'ot.^[22]

Since the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, there were still many Jewish villages in the Corridor but their numbers eventually and dramatically declined. When the Spanish Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela visited the area in c. 1173, he noted a small Jewish community remaining in Beth Guvrin. Jewish pilgrims often traversed the area along the ancient road stretching from Jaffa to Jerusalem. But beginning in the early 16^th century, the Abu Ghosh clan from the town of the same name, would often demand a toll from pilgrims regardless of faith. Soon after, the Land of Israel came under the control of the Ottoman Empire but molestation of pilgrims continued. In 1827, Sir Moses Montefiore made his first visit to Israel and travelled on this road. In his diary, he explicitly stated that he was never molested for a toll. In the course of the 19^th century, when reforms began to be implemented in the Ottoman Empire, a proper road was constructed on the pilgrimage route (today, the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway (Highway 1)) and a khan was built at Shaar Hagai in 1867 for the accommodation of travelers. It was managed by several Jewish families since its foundation.

In 1854, farmland was purchased from the Arab village of Qalunya (today, Mevaseret Zion) by a Baghdadi Jew, Shaul Yehuda, with the aid of the British consul in Jerusalem James Finn. Thus, the Jewish village of Motza was founded and the first 4 families began to settle there. One established a tile factory which was one of the earliest industries in the region. In 1871, a travelers’ inn was also established. When Theodor Herzl visited Palestine in 1898, he passed through Motza, which then had a population of 200. Captivated by the landscape, he planted a cypress tree on a hill. After he died in 1904 at age 44, it became an annual pilgrimage site by Zionist youth, who planted more trees around Herzl's tree.

In the early 1870s, the Spanish consul in Jerusalem, Alexander Spanoli, bought over 5,000 dunams of land from the Arab villagers of Artuf, which was then sold to the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. After the pogroms against the Jews in Eastern Europe in 1882, the Society embarked on a fundraising mission, and then used some of the money raised to help Jewish refugees purchase some of its land. Towards the end of 1883, 24 families were settled there, each receiving 150 dunams of farmland, farm animals and tools. But due to economic difficulties and the lack of water, some of the land was leased to Arabs. The Society was still involved in the village’s life though, and the Jewish residents were obliged to attend Sunday meetings and send their children to the missionary school, but there were no instances of outright religious coercion. Most of the residents remained practicing Jews. In 1895, the Bulgarian Hibbat Zion movement bought the 5,000-dunam farm from the London Jews Society and renamed it Har-Tuv (lit. Mountain of Good). Twelve Jewish families settled there and tried to earn a living from agriculture. In 1900, one of the residents inaugurated a carriage service to Jerusalem.

In the following years, other Jewish communities were founded. The village of Kfar Uria was established in 1912 and served as an agricultural training place. Many of the local Arabs were on good terms with the people who lived there and had treated the moshav's association director, Baruch Yakimovsky, as their mukhtar (village chief) as he was on amicable terms with mukhtars in surrounding villages. The farmers of the area, both Jews and Arabs, cooperated and defended each other against raiding nomadic Bedouin. During this time, the leaders of Abu Ghosh decided to work together with the Jews and were also on friendly terms with the Zionist leaders. In 1912, the land on which kibbutz Kiryat Anavim stands, was purchased from the village by Arthur Ruppin, head of the Zionist Organization’s Palestine Office in Jaffa. In 1919 a group of 6 pioneers from the Ukrainian town of Kaminiz Podolsk and Preluki settled there, near a small spring called "Dilb" so-called for the surrounding plane trees. Twenty more arrived there in the spring of 1920 when Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann visited Palestine and was hosted by the residents of Abu Ghosh. Ramat Rahel was established in 1926 by members of the Gdud HaAvoda labor brigade.

In the 1929 Arab riots, most of the Jewish communities in the area, like many nationwide, were attacked and destroyed, often by Arabs from outside the area, resulting in the killing or expelling of the inhabitants. In the early 30s most of the Jewish refugees were able to return home. Hartuv and Ramat Rahel were rebuilt in 1930, as was Kfar Uria whose inhabitants were saved by their Arab neighbors. But in Kfar Uria, settlement was intermittent especially during the resumption of the Arab riots in 1936-1939. It was only settled permanently in 1944 by Jewish stonecutters from Kurdistan. In 1933, Motza Ilit was established near site of the original destroyed community where many had been massacred and the corpses burned.

The kibbutz Maale Hahamisha was founded by members of the Gordonia youth movement on July 19, 1938 as one of 57 strategically-placed tower and stockade settlements founded during the 1936-1939 Arab riots in order to defend the surrounding Jewish communities against Arab attacks. It was named after five men ambushed and killed by Arab gunmen nearby. In 1946, the land on which Neve Ilan is located was purchased by the Jewish National Fund from an effendi  landowner from Abu Ghosh at the urging of David Ben-Gurion in order to establish a "Kibbutz Army Post" to defend the Jerusalem road. The initial 31 settlers were 17 young men and 14 young women, mostly Jewish immigrants from France. Shortly aftereward, six hundred dunams of modern-day Kiryat Ye'arim were purchased by Menashe Elissar, a businessman who was attracted to the site as the location of the biblical Kiryat Ye'arim.

At the end of November 1947, considered the beginning of Israel’s War of Independence, the road to Jerusalem was cut off and the Arabs began to besiege the city’s Jewish neighborhoods. On the other side of the Corridor, the area from Neve Ilan to Hulda, was under their control allowing them to dominate the hilltops overlooking Bab al-Wad all the way to the Neve Ilan plateau. In the meantime, Arabs and Jews fought for control of the Arab fortress settlement of al-Qastal, which overlooked the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway and from where Jewish motorists were routinely ambushed. Al-Qastal exchanged hands several times in the course of the fighting until the Arab commander Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni was killed. Many of the Arabs left their positions to attend al-Husayni's funeral at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday, April 9. That same day, al-Qastal fell to the Yishuv forces, virtually unopposed. Later that month, a battle occurred at Deir Yassin which was especially intense, but Irgun and Palmach fighters liberated that too, at great cost. Unfortunately, many innocent civilians were also killed. News reports in the Arab press described it as a deliberate massacre and the Arab masses believed it without question. It has remained a sore point with them ever since. 

On May 8, Palmach fighters, as part of Operation Macabee, gathered at Neve Ilan in preparation for an attack on the village of Saris, and the western approach to Bab al-Wad. After heavy fighting, that road was finally liberated. Shortly afterward, in order to lift the siege on Jerusalem, the Burma Road was built, under Arab fire. It helped to bring necessary supplies to the Jews in Jerusalem and in October, Israeli troops, in Operation HaHar, finally brought the entire area under their control.

After the War, Ma'ale HaHamisha took in refugees from Gush Etzion, the area of which, had come under Arab occupation. Beginning in 1950, many new Jewish communities were established in the Corridor, many on earlier Biblical Israelite towns. A local re-afforestation project also began spearheaded by the Jewish National Fund. On December 6, 1950, the Hartuv displaced persons camp "Ma'abarat Har-Tuv" was established on the site of the current-day Moshav Naham. Its first inhabitants were Bulgarian Jews. They were soon joined by other Bulgarian Jews as well as those from Iran, Iraq, Romania, Morocco and Kurdistan. In its early years, Beit Shemesh came to typify the "Development Town" with a largely North African population. Maoz Zion ("Stronghold of Zion") was established in 1951 to house new immigrants from Iraq, Kurdistan, North Africa and Iran who had been living in a ma'abara at the foot of al-Qastal. Many were employed at the nearby Solel Boneh stone quarry. Tzur Hadassah was established in 1956 as a regional center for nearby moshavim such as Bar Giora, Mata, Mevo Beitar and Nes Harim. It was named for the Hadassah organization. Also in 1956, Neve Ilan was disbanded and vacated, due to economic and social problems but in the late sixties, the Young Judeans in America sent a group to establish an industrial village. The members arrived in early 1970, and moved into the homes built by the Jewish Agency, and the settlement was re-established as a moshav in 1971.

Today, in addition to the Jerusalem – Tel Aviv highway (Highway 1), a number of additional routes lead to Jerusalem; Route 443 which covers the northern part of the corridor; Route 395 leads from Ein Kerem to the coast, via Ramat Raziel and Bet Shemesh, and continues south; Route 386 leads to the Ella Valley, via Bar Giora and Tzur Hadassa. A railway line is also active in the corridor, next to the Sorek Stream, which is part of the historical Jaffa–Jerusalem railway.