Jisr al Majami Historically the only structure in the area was the Roman bridge of
Jisr Majami. A railway bridge was built parallel to it in the early 20th century to carry the
Jezreel Valley railway, opened in 1905. The bridge played a strategic role in
World War I; it was taken by the
19th Lancers during the
Capture of Afulah and Beisan. When the Rutenberg concession was given, it was defined as the area around Jisr Majami.
Hydroelectric power station , circa 1933 Pinhas Rutenberg, a
Russian-born Zionist and engineer
immigrated to Palestine in 1919. After submitting a plan to the Zionist movement for the establishment of 13 hydroelectric power stations and securing financing for the plan, he was awarded a concession from the British Mandatory government to generate electricity, first from the
Yarkon River near
Tel Aviv, and shortly thereafter, utilizing all the running water in western Palestine. Naharayim is part of 6,000 dunams (600 ha) sold to the Palestine Electric Corporation (PEC) run by Pinhas Rutenberg. The Naharayim site was chosen for the strong water flow and the possibility of regulating the flow through storage in the
Sea of Galilee during the winter rainy season and release of the water reserves in the summer. Construction began in 1927 and continued for five years, providing employment for 3,000 workers. The site was named Naharayim, Hebrew for "Two Rivers." Due to its relative isolation and despite the limited number of resident families, the village included a clinic, a kindergarten, and even a school, established by Yosef Hanani for the children of employees. The families of the employees at Tel Or were evacuated from the settlement in April 1948, leaving behind only workers with Jordanian ID cards. Following a prolonged battle between Palestinian Jewish forces and the Transjordanian Arab Legion in the area, the remaining residents of Tel Or were given an ultimatum to surrender or leave the village. Tel Or was abandoned by the residents, who were evacuated to Jewish-controlled areas across the river. During the 1948 War, 70 Palestinian Arab families from a village just meters away on the Palestinian side of the Jordan River populated the abandoned site.
1947/8 diplomacy In the lead up to the
End of the British Mandate for Palestine and Israeli independence, Naharayim was the venue for a meeting between
Golda Meir and King
Abdullah on 17 November 1947. There was a second meeting in Amman on 10 May 1948, after the Gesher incident (see below), in an attempt by the Jewish leadership to head off Jordanian participation in the war.
1948 war map of the area On 27 April 1948, in violation of a November 1947 agreement between
Golda Meir and
King Abdullah, the
Arab Legion's 4th Battalion launched a mortar and artillery attack on the Naharayim
police fort and
Kibbutz Gesher (on the Palestinian side of the border). On the evening of 27 April, the Legion began shelling the fort and kibbutz, stepping up the attack the following day. Many of the kibbutz buildings were destroyed. On the morning of April 29, a Legion officer demanded the evacuation of the fort, but was turned down. After protests to the British Mandate administration, the shelling was halted, and Abdullah was reprimanded for "aggression against Palestine territory." Although the attack did constitute a violation of the understanding, a British officer of the Legion claimed afterwards that it was an unfortunate local misunderstanding. The impetus for the attack was the seizure by the settlers of the police fortress which the British had invited Glubb Pasha to take over. The settlement would have fallen except that Abdullah told his son Talal to halt the attack. In the wake of the attack 50 children of the kibbutz were evacuated, first to the Ravitz Hotel on the Carmel, and then to a 19th-century French monastery on the grounds of
Rambam Hospital in the
Bat Galim neighborhood of
Haifa, where they lived for the next 22 months. An Iraqi brigade invaded at Naharayim on May 15, 1948, in an unsuccessful attempt to take the kibbutz and fort. The power plant was occupied and looted by the Iraqi forces. To prevent Iraqi tanks from attacking Jewish villages in the
Jordan Valley, the sluice gates of the Degania dam were opened. The rush of water, which deepened the river at this spot, was instrumental in blocking the Iraqi-Jordanian incursion. ==1949 armistice line==