Margaliot

Margaliot
View of Margaliot View of Margaliot
Coordinates:
District	Northern
Council	Mevo'ot HaHermon Regional Council
Region	Upper Galilee
Founded	1951
Founded by	Jewish immigrants from Yemen and Iraq.
Population (2009)	427

Margaliot (Hebrew: מַרְגָּלִיּוֹת‎; Arabic: هونين‎‎) is a moshav in the Upper Galilee in northern Israel, located along the border with Lebanon, near the town of Kiryat Shmona. It is part of the Mevo'ot HaHermon Regional Council. Margaliot was established in 1951 by Jewish immigrants from Yemen and Iraq and has a population of 400, most of them Jews of Iranian Kurdistan descent.

History

Antiquity

File:Chateau Neuf Fortress in Upper Galilee, Israel.jpg

Château Neuf Crusader Fortress

The site has sporadic habitation dating from Iron Age 1 (1200-1000BCE) and continuous habitation from circa 550 to 350 BCE until circa 550 CE, then sporadic habitation again until the 1800s. Château Neuf (New Castle), a Crusader fortress, is situated by the road leading to the moshav. Château Neuf provides a clear view of the Nimrod Fortress and several other fortresses in the area.

British Mandate era

The Syria-Lebanon-Palestine boundary was a product of the post-World War I Anglo-French partition of Ottoman Syria. British forces had advanced to a position at Tel Hazor against Turkish troops in 1918 and wished to incorporate all the sources of the Jordan River within British controlled Palestine. Following the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and the unratified and later annulled Treaty of Sèvres, stemming from the San Remo conference, the 1920 boundary extended the British controlled area to north of the Sykes Picot line, a straight line between the midpoint of the Sea of Galilee and Nahariya. The international boundary between Palestine and Lebanon was finally agreed upon by Great Britain and France in 1923, in conjunction with the Treaty of Lausanne, after Britain had been given a League of Nations mandate for Palestine in 1922.

In April 1924, Hunin and six other villages, and an estimated 20 other settlements, were transferred from the French Mandate of Lebanon to the British Mandate of Palestine by France. Hunin was a Shi'ite Muslim village with a population of 1620 recorded in 1945. A Palmach raid in May 1948 led to many of the inhabitants fleeing to Lebanon, leaving 400 in the village. During a meeting in August 1948, the mukhtars of Hunin and other Shi'ite villages met with the Jews of kibbutz Kfar Giladi to try to make a peace agreement with the state of Israel. They promised to live as loyal citizens and renounce Arab national aspirations. A report was made by the Department of Minorities recommending that such an agreement be reached with the 4,700 or so Shi'ites in the region to promote friendly relations with southern Lebanon, to take advantage of the Shi'ites' poor relationship with the majority Sunnis, and to enhance the prospect of a future extension of the border. This proposal was not accepted, despite the support of the minorities minister Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit. In August, more inhabitants of Hunin were forced to flee by the IDF. On September the 3rd 1948, the IDF raided the village blowing up 20 houses, killing a son of the mukhtar and 19 others and expelling the remaining villagers.

State of Israel

Margaliot was established in 1951, by Jewish immigrants from Yemen and Iraq, on the site of the Shiite town of Hunin, which itself was a village based on the site as rebuilt by Crusaders. The moshav was renamed after Chaim Margaliot Kalverisky, who headed the Jewish Colonization Association in the Galilee in the early twentieth century, and participated in the establishment of several Jewish settlements in the area. In 2006, 230 residents of Margaliot were evacuated to the Neve Hadassah youth village near Netanya due to Katyusha rocket fire from Lebanon.

Notable residents

• Yossi Sarid

See also

• List of Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
• Seven Lebanese Villages