Afula

Afula (Hebrew עפולה, Arabic العفولة, DMG al - ʿ Afula ) is a city in Israel.

Location

Afula is a city council in the North District of Israel. It is located between Nazareth and Jenin in the Jezreel Valley, where it is an important transportation hub. It is also often referred to as the capital of the Jezreel Valley. The main attraction in the area is Mount Tabor.

History

Afula is not mentioned in the Bible. In the Crusader period a castle was built to protect an important intersection of the plane. The Crusaders called it Le Fève. Remains of the Crusader castle located in the nearby kibbutz Merchawia.

The Arab village of " Afule " received in the course of the construction of the railway line Haifa Daraa, a branch line of the Hedjaz Railway, a railway station. The route went into operation in 1904 in this section. The railway line Afula - Nablus was built from here to the south, opened its first section in 1912.

A Jewish settlement was established on 31 March 1925. The American Zion Commonwealth Ltd. , Who had purchased the land of the village, Richard Kauffmann gave the order a development plan for the expansion of the city to create. Kauffmann took the central location Afulas along transport routes and close to the productive agriculture in the Jezreel Valley as a starting point to develop it as the site of central services for agriculture ( agricultural machinery trade, mills, silos, agricultural processing). The staked his plans plots were 1925/1926 sold to well-intentioned investors in North America that are not usually built and developed, but the country - also due to the Great Depression - initially only held. Kauffmann's space plan for Afula took only then between 1938-1940 slowly visible shape.

The establishment of Israel brought Afula the status of a developing city. The government then expropriated the American owners of undeveloped land to develop it themselves, but Afula was not what Kauffmann and others had originally expected. The new boundary layer with cut roads, was advised by the armistice line of 1948/1949 in the Afula, it took its geographical advantage and the kibbutzim and moshavim the Jezreel Valley had long since established itself for the necessary central services facilities in-house. The road to Jerusalem was interrupted, and the railway, which now ended at the border to Syria, was finally closed in 1951, since the operation is no longer calculated on the remaining part of the course.

Population

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics indicates at the censuses of November 8, 1948 May 22, 1961, May 19, 1972 June 4, 1983, November 4, 1995 and December 28, 2008, the following Afula for population figures:

Sons and daughters of the town

  • Yael Bartana ( b. 1970 ), artist
  • Rafael Eitan (1929 - 2004), General and member of the Knesset
  • Avischai Margalit ( born 1939 ), philosopher

Twinning

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