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The Story of Adamit
Chapter 1 - Early History of the Area (gleaned by Barry Steinberg)
When V. Guerin embarked upon his exploratory survey of the Holy Land in the 1870's and 1880's he was undoubtedly one of the first Westerners to have reached the region defined by the frontier of Irbin and Khirbet Idmit. Having inspected the ruins of Irbin in 1880, he was guided to the broader promontory at Tel Idmith where he aptly offered a description of lean-to ruins, heaps of stones which provided a story for later generations to decipher. His own job was two-fold; that of a chronicler who wrote what he saw, and that of a surveyor whose cartographic work would shortly form the basis of the Palestine Exploration Survey of May, 1878 which was ‘surveyed and drawn under the direction of Lieutenants C.R. Conder R.E. and Herbert H. Kitchener.' Lieutenant Kitchener would shortly be known as Kitchener of Khartoum, the ‘Sirdar' of the Egyptian army, and obtain various other high military posts within the British colonial regime in South Africa, and India, eventually becoming the War Minister in the Asquith government during the early stages of World War I.
It is likely that V. Guerin was guided by a local from Arab al-Aramshe when he espied his first heap of unarticulated stones. Subsequent unfinished work in the field would reveal Early and Middle Bronze (Canaanite) pottery, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Mamluke and later Arabic shards; ruins of unidentified housing from antiquity, wine and oil presses, and a small quarry which evidently served the specific needs of the oil press. Near what is today Kibbutz Adamit, a burial cave was also discovered. Much of these subsequent discoveries were investigated by Aharoni from 1957 and even as late as 1962 additional burial chambers were found in the region of Irbin. At the time there was speculation that they belonged to the Jewish period of settlement during the latter part of the Second Commonwealth.
Most early press accounts of the region describe a beautiful, wild and untamed land, pristine and primitive. We can account for Arab al-Aramshe's presence in the region because they are alluded to by V. Guerin and appear in the Conder-Kitchener map, along with Arab al-Akleitat, who were predisposed to occupying land in the vicinity of Irbin. al-Akleitat are said to have fled into Lebanon during the war in 1947-48. Often press accounts of the region have nearly described a virtual Galapagos Island, emphasizing its remoteness, a habitat well suited for rare raptor birds and rarer men, secluded in their mountain fastness, amidst the craggy precipices where eagles lodged, untouched by events of the day. Isolation bears hardship but it also brings with it fierce independence. The frontier to the North partially remained undisturbed by any geographical factor, and politics rather than geography played a crucial role in extracting this stretch of territory from the French, who ceded it to the British Mandate in 1923.
Dorf, a police officer who commanded the Acre district during the earlier period of the Mandate, claimed to have subjugated the Bedouin after one skirmish in which the British suffered casualties. Occasionally the Bedouin would harass other Arab communities in the plains; cattle rustling being one pastime. Dorf's later success in bringing al-Aramshe into the fold was attributed to his serendipitous meeting with Rihaniya Mizal, whom he described as the sheikh's perspicacious daughter. This later enabled him to enlist a few good men into his own force, one of whom by the Englishman's account, assisted him nobly in defending Afula from rampaging Arabs.
In the late 1930's al-Aramshe was drawn further into contact with the Jews when lands were purchased to establish the three ‘Tower and Stockade' kibbutzim; Hanita, Matsuva, and Eilon. Aside from the proximity of new neighbors, theses lands were bought from the Mamluke family, who for the most part were absentee landlords who owned much of the land within the Adamit region. Indeed, one Ibrahim Mamluke had established himself in Irbin while renting property in a shareholder type of arrangement with a segment of Aramshe in the region of Khirbet Idmith. His own stature amongst the Bedouin was made interesting by the fact that his son Nur had married Fauzia Sweidan,ensuring the Mamluke connection within the tribe. It is said that his harsh treatment did little to overly endear him with his tenant-neighbors. During the upheavals in the region caused by the war in 1948 he was encouraged by his Jewish neighbors to gracefully exit north into Lebanon.
During the uncertain period following the UN recognition of the Jewish state and the fighting which occurred in the region, Aramshe adopted an official neutrality. It assisted the Jews in Eilon while appearing sympathetic to local Arab sentiment. Prudently they might be prodded into acting against their Jewish neighbors while doing nothing. Faris Mgheis relates to a plan to sabotage the pumping station in Wadi Karkara which provided Eilon with its water at the behest of a Syrian intelligence officer who was based at Tarshikha, Khalil al-Hlas (the Palestine Liberation Army controlled some territory in the region). This feat went unaccomplished. On the other hand, Aramshe's contacts with farmers in Lebanon enabled them to smuggle food for Eilon especially during a period when Eilon was either besieged or under threat of siege. As a result, good relations which evolved during the 1940's, and in particular those ‘bonds' apparently forged during the 1948 war, assured Aramshe's continuing existence on the Adamit plateau as an Arab community in a border region! This was indeed exceptional policy as much of the Arab population in the region had either fled or been evicted from their homes.
After independence the region was allowed for the most part to go its own way. There were still no convenient access routes, and the frontier armistice regime was poorly monitored in this area thus enabling a ‘business as usual routine' to develop and prosper. The Bedouin engaged in pastoral occupations; goat, sheep and cattle. Goat tracks wound down the hillside into the Karkara gorge, where the main water supply was pack-hauled up the mountainside. There were a few cisterns which existed throughout the plateau. Two of them existed in the area slated for Kibbutz Adamit, in the vicinity of Khirbet Miri and Jurat Nebi Selim. Another existed in al-Qasa, which part of the Sweidan family inhabited or at Jordea, perched on a hillock overlooking the frontier and the Lebanese hamlet of al-Dheheira. All other farming was either subsistent vegetable garden type or dry crops; tobacco, chick pea etc. We are told that further to the northeast where the plateau rises above 500 meters water would collect in a region known generally as Manara, at a place named Birkat al-Rashad. This pool though would eventually subside, its rainwater exploited and the rest given to evaporation or even direct livestock use in the first arid months.
About 1956 the government came to reassert its sovereignty in the area and formally conferred citizenship on Aramshe. This was a voluntary procedure and for those within the tribe who preferred otherwise the choice existed to migrate into Lebanon. At the same time plans were in the making to etch out an access road which was carved and hewn out of the hillside adjacent Wadi Delam [Nimr]. The road itself was hailed as an engineering feat and took between two to three years to complete. While the road created relatively easy access to this once ‘forbidding' part of the country, it also literally paved the way for Jewish settlement, or for some resettlement of an area thought to have been lived in by Jews during the latter stage of the Second Jewish Commonwealth.
In 1958 the Jewish Agency engaged itself in a major settlement campaign along the Lebanese frontier. Security was cited as a prime reason for this intensive settlement policy. While the Israel-Lebanese frontier was generally quiet, the Middle East was undergoing upheaval and during 1958 leftist, pro-Nasser agitation posed enough of a threat to the government in Beirut that the U.S.felt compelled to intervene when the Eisenhower Administration responded to a request from the Chamoun government.
About eight communities were put on the drawing board, all of whom were of the ethnic-moshav type; North African and Middle Eastern. The communities which comprised the Sulam Tsur Regional Council argued vosciforously for a kibbutz on the Adamit plateau. Their argument for this type of settlement was that it would best serve the region's needs. Eventually the parties to the planning, the Jewish Agency and the Lands Administration, rescinded their objection. One reason was that there was little arable land to sustain two new farming communities, but the pressure of Sulam Tsur was decisive.
The serpentine road to the plateau, the Jewish community, the attendant utilities, irrevocably changed the local environment. An intensive agrarian program was pursued with the idea of transforming available arable land into orchards. Most of this land was lodged between primarily oak scrub forest [maquis] and garrigue with heavy clay or terra rosa soils, usually inundated with a rich quantity of limestone and its boulder variants.
A few additional preliminary matters were attended to. A few families from Arab al-Aramshe who had been living in permanent housing in either Khirbet Miri, or in lands appropriated for agriculture [Melul, Sharqia, al-Qasa] were compensated for their homes and farmland and moved eastward to Mazra'a, near their kinsmen who permanently resided in Khirbet Mgheis, across from Irbin. Two of the three buildings of Khirbet Miri remain standing to this day. The buildings in Qasa and Sharqia were demolished by the IDF during the war in 1973. Wakhash Sa'ad owned property on the northern slope at Melul which was destined to become a peach orchard. No trace of former habitation exists. The Jewish Agency concerned itself with building new homes and substituting farmland.
There was disagreement concerning the name of the new community. Press reports as early as July, 1958 refer to the selected site as Am Tsur. There is even a dedicatory bronze plaque from New York's Yiddish daily, The Forward, which refers to the site as Am Tsur. Kibbutz Artzi, the parent kibbutz federation of the proposed kibbutz, was intent on naming the site for Yitzchak Yitchaki, a veteran pioneer activist within their movement. It was a name board which settled the matter, deciding on the name Adamit, and this only after the original inhabitants had moved to the site. The name evolves from the little known community of the Second Jewish Commonwealth, and the pronunciation is specifically Hebrew and distinct from the Arabic Idmith, which enjoyed circulation in the press for a number of years despite the strenuous efforts of the government to educate the press otherwise.