Modern Israel's northern border meets the Mediterranean at a place called Rosh Hanikra. A coastal plain separates the range of mountains that form the backbone of Israel. Stone rarely meets the sea in Israel, so the range of limestone cliffs that marks the frontier is unusual here. For thousands of years water has pounded on stone. Here and there cracks caused by seismic activity have been widened and carved into caves and grottos by the force of the waves. 
Just over the hills are Hezbollah terrorists. This isn't just a border. 'The front lines' would be a better word for it, and the Navy patrol boat standing guard is a reminder of that.
In the 1930's Arabs rose up against the British masters of the Palestinian Mandate as well as the Jews living there. The local town of Nahariya was back then an isolated outpost in a sea of hostility. The response to this was to establish 55 new settlements. Since any new Jewish presence would immediately provoke a violent response from the locals, the settlers would arrive in the morning with prefabricated buildings complete with a bullet proof perimeter and guard tower and by nightfall a new kibbutz was an established fact on the ground. Today's Kibbutz Hanita was one of these "Wall and Tower" settlements, founded 21st of March, 1938.After the Holocaust it was clear that living in exile was no longer a option for Jews. But exhausted by World War II and Arab resistance to a Jewish homeland, the British had caved in to pressure to prevent immigration of Jewish survivors of Hitler's final solution to Palestine.
On the night between 16 and 17 of June, 1946 the Palmach (the Jewish Agency's underground elite resistance unit) was dispatched to blow up 11 connecting Mandatory Palestine to the surrounding countries. The idea was to get the British Foreign Service's attention, no more. The plan was designed to involve little or no loss of life, but when the force approaching Achziv bridge near Nahariya was discovered before planting explosives, a fire fight broke out and 13 palmachniks were killed. Their bodies were taken away and buried by the authorities in a mass grave. Recently their families recovered the remains and today they are interred together in the ground where they fell in 1946.
In the hills near Hanita is the Rainbow cave. It's actually an arch. According to the Bedouins that live near by, a Muslim holy man gathered everyone in the area to the cave for 'revival meeting'. The locals were hardened sinners and laughed at the preacher when he told them to repent of their ways. The preacher called on Allah to punish the hecklers, and so he did – bringing the roof of the cave down on the evil, leaving only an arch over the head of the preacher..
.
Geologists say that the roof of the cave collapsed long before Islam. Water slowly eroded the soft chalk stone underneath the limestone forming a cave in the cliffs and eventually the roof caved in, leaving only an arch. Regardless of whom you believe, the Bedouins or the scientists, standing on the arch at the end of the day and watching the sun go down over the Mediterranean is breathtaking. (And I didn't poke fun at Allah until I got off the arch.)
When the time came for the Jewish nation to return to its homeland, it proved to be an irresistible force, like the relentless waves that carve channels into stone, patient as raindrops eroding opposition. Arab resistance and the British Empire, as immovable as they were, were no match for the tides of destiny that carved out the modern Jewish state called Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment