Sha'ar HaAmakim () is a

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

associated with the

Hashomer Hatzair Hashomer Hatzair (, , 'The Young Guard') is a Labor Zionism, Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary. It was also the name of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party, the ...

movement founded in 1935. Located near

Kiryat Tiv'on Kiryat Tiv'on (, also Qiryat Tiv'on) is a town in the Haifa District of Israel, in the hills between the Zvulun (Zebulon) and Jezreel valleys. Kiryat Tiv'on is located southeast of Haifa, on the main road to Nazareth. Kiryat Tiv'on is the resul ...

, it falls under the jurisdiction of

Zevulun Regional Council Zevulun Regional Council (, ''Mo'atza Azorit Zvulun'') is a regional council in the Haifa District of Israel. Founded in 1950, it had a population of 10,900 in 2006. The council borders Mateh Asher Regional Council to the north, Jezreel Valley ...

. In it had a population of .

History

Antiquity

Human habitation in the area dates at least as far back as the

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

. Although the site, in recent history, has borne the name of ''Ḫirbet el-Ḥârithîye'', it is thought by modern-day archaeologists to have been the Second Temple-period site known as ''Geba'' / ''Gibea'' (), based on

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

' description of distances between ''Geba'' and Simonias and

Beit She'arim (Roman-era Jewish village) Beit She'arim (; / Bet Sharei), also Besara (),Rogers (2021), p. 534 was a Jews, Jewish village located in the southwestern hills of the Lower Galilee, during the Roman Empire, Roman period, from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE. At on ...

Lower Galilee The Lower Galilee (; ) is a region within the Northern District of Israel. The Lower Galilee is bordered by the Jezreel Valley to the south; the Upper Galilee to the north, from which it is separated by the Beit HaKerem Valley; the Jordan Rift ...

Crusades

In 1283, during the ''

hudna A ''hudna'' (from the Arabic meaning "calm" or "quiet") is a truce or armistice. It is sometimes translated as " cease-fire". In his medieval dictionary of classical Arabic, the '' Lisan al-Arab'', Ibn Manzur defined it as: : "''hadana'': he ...

'' ("truce") between the

Crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding ...

based in

Acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

and the

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

sultan

al-Mansur Qalawun (, – November 10, 1290) was the seventh Turkic Bahri Mamluk sultan of Egypt; he ruled from 1279 to 1290. He was called (, "Qalāwūn the Victorious"). After having risen in power in the Mamluk court and elite circles, Qalawun eventually hel ...

, this location was named ''el Harathiyah'' and was described as part of the domain of the Crusaders.

Ottoman rule

During the Ottoman era, a Muslim village at the site was named ''el Hâritheh''. The village appeared as ''El Harti'' on the map of

Pierre Jacotin Pierre Jacotin (1765–1827) was the director of the Surveying, survey for the ''Carte de l'Égypte (Description de l'Égypte)'', the first triangulation-based map of Egypt, Syria and Palestine. The maps were drafted in 1799–1800 during Napole ...

compiled in 1799. In 1859, the population was recorded as 120 with tillable land of 12

feddan A feddan () is a unit of area used in Egypt, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Oman. In Classical Arabic, the word means 'a yoke of oxen', implying the area of ground that could be tilled by oxen in a certain time. In Egypt, the feddan is the only n ...

s.Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p
270
/ref> In 1875,

Victor Guérin Victor Guérin (; 15 September 1821 – 21 September 1890) was a French people, French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included ...

reported about 40 houses. In 1882, the

Palestine Exploration Fund The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization i ...

's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' described it as an

adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

hamlet. A population list from about 1887 showed that ''Harithiyeh'' had about 120 inhabitants; all Muslims.

British Mandate

In the

1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divis ...

, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, the ''Al Zubaidat'', who cultivated the ''Hartieh'' land, numbered 363, all Muslims. The area was acquired by the Jewish community as part of the

Sursock Purchase The Sursock Purchases were land purchases made by Jewish organizations from the absentee landowning Lebanese Greek Orthodox Christian Sursock family, mainly from 1901 to 1925. These included the Jezreel Valley and Haifa Bay, as well as other l ...

. In 1925 a Zionist organisation purchased 50

s in ''Hartieh'' from the

Sursock family The Sursock family (also spelled Sursuq) is a Greek Orthodox Christian family from Lebanon, and used to be one of the most important families of Beirut. Having originated in Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire, the family has lived in Bei ...

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

. At the time, there were 60 families living there. In the 1931 census, the ''Arab Zubeidat'' was counted under the

Shefa-'Amr Shefa-Amr or Shefar'am (; ) is an Arab city in the Northern District of Israel. In it had a population of with a Sunni Muslim majority and large Christian Arab and Druze minorities. Etymology Palmer writes that the name meant: "The margin ...

suburbs.Mills, 1932, p
90
From 1931, and lasting several years, the

Jewish Agency The Jewish Agency for Israel (), formerly known as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world. It was established in 1929 as the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). As an ...

struggled to evict the ''Arab El Zubeidat'', who were

tenant farmer A tenant farmer is a farmer or farmworker who resides and works on land owned by a landlord, while tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and ma ...

s at ''Hartiya''.Avneri, 1984, pp
156-7
/ref> According to Avneri, ''Hartiya'' land was to become Sha'ar HaAmakim. According to the Department of Statistics, however, Sha'ar HaAmakim had previously been part of

Sheikh Bureik Sheikh Bureik (), locally called Sheikh Abreik or Sheikh Ibreik in recent times,Sharon, 2004, p. xxxvii/ref> was a Palestinian Arab village located southeast of Haifa.Negev and Gibson, 2001pp. 86–87 Situated at an ancient site that shows eviden ...

. Kibbutz Sha'ar HaAmakim was founded in 1935 by

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

from

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

and

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

. One of its founders was

Aharon Cohen Aharon Cohen (; 1910–1980) was a senior member of Mapam, a pro-USSR Israeli political party which existed during the first two decades of statehood. Biography Born in Briceni (formally, Britchany), Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire (later ...

, later to be convicted of spying for the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Its name was derived from the nearby

confluence In geography, a confluence (also ''conflux'') occurs where two or more watercourses join to form a single channel (geography), channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main ...

of the Jezreel and

Zevulun According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Zebulun (alternatively rendered as ''Zabulon, Zabulin, Zabulun, Zebulon''; ) was one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes in the Boo ...

valleys. By the 1945 statistics it had a population of 360, all Jews.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
15
/ref>Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
49
/ref>

State of Israel

Sha'ar HaAmakim hosted volunteers from around the world, including France and the United States, who worked at the kibbutz and participated in cultural exchanges. In the 1960s, there were up to 100 volunteers each year.

Bernie Sanders Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician and activist who is the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from the state of Vermont. He is the longest-serving independ ...

spent time at the kibbutz for several months in 1963.

Economy

According to a 2016 report, the kibbutz derives most of its income from its

solar water heater Solar water heating (SWH) is heating water by sunlight, using a solar thermal collector. A variety of configurations are available at varying cost to provide solutions in different climates and latitudes. SWHs are widely used for residential an ...

factory. Additional sources of income include agriculture, such as

dairy farming Dairy farming is a class of agriculture for the long-term production of milk, which is processed (either on the farm or at a dairy plant, either of which may be called a dairy) for the eventual sale of a dairy product. Dairy farming has a h ...

. For over five decades, the kibbutz has produced and processed

sunflower seed A sunflower seed is a seed from a sunflower (''Helianthus annuus''). There are three types of commonly used sunflower seeds: linoleic (most common), high oleic, and sunflower oil seeds. Each variety has its own unique levels of monounsatura ...

s which it markets under its name both in Israel and for export. It also has a

fish pond A fish pond or fishpond is a controlled pond, small artificial lake or retention basin that is stocked with fish and is used in aquaculture for fish farming, for recreational fishing, or for ornamental purposes. Fish ponds are a classical g ...

and orchards producing apples, peaches, and pears.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * (reprinted from 1944 edition) * * *

External links

* *Survey of Western Palestine, Map 5
IAA

Wikimedia commons Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based Digital library, media repository of Open content, free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used ...

Kibbutz Sha'ar HaAmakim Collection
(in Hebrew) on the Digital collections of

Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library The Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library is a central academic library of the University of Haifa, and one of the largest in Israel. It is also one of the most progressive Israeli libraries in terms of service, collection, physical space, and libra ...

, University of Haifa {{portal bar, Israel Kibbutzim Kibbutz Movement Populated places established in 1935 Populated places in Haifa District Romanian-Jewish culture in Israel 1935 establishments in Mandatory Palestine Yugoslav-Jewish culture in Israel