Afula

For archaeological finds from Tell 'Afula predating the Crusader/Mamluk fortress, see the Archaeology paragraph.

Afula is possibly the place Ophlah, mentioned in the lists of Pharaoh Thutmose III.[6] Afula has been identified with the ancient Israelite town of Ofel mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.[7] With the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel, the area continued to be inhabited, and excavations have revealed artifacts from the periods of Persian and Roman rule. Conder suggested that Afula was identical with Kirjath Ophlathah, a place inhabited by Samaritans in the 7th century.[8]

Remains of Crusader fortress in Afula. Note the spolia; Roman sarcophagi as the top layer.

At the centre of Tell 'Afule stand the remains of a 19 metres square fortress from the Mamluk period, possibly first built during the Crusader period.[5][4] The lower four courses are made of rough boulders, while the top remaining layer is made of reused Roman sarcophagi. The wall is a total of 5.5 meters tall. Pottery remains indicate that it was occupied in the twelfth and thirteenth century.[4] The gate is dated based on pottery findings to the Mamluk period (13th–14th centuries CE), but so far (after the June 2017 campaign) it couldn't be determined when fortress itself was built, since it is perfectly possible that just the gate was renovated in the Mamluk period; the square shape and the use of Roman sarcophagi as building stones is closely resembling the Crusader fortress at Sepphoris.[5]

In 1321, Afula was mentioned under the name of Afel by Marino Sanuto.[9]

A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 showed this place, named as Afouleh in a French transliteration of the Arabic.[10]

In 1816, James Silk Buckingham passed by and described Affouli as being built on rising ground, and containing only a few dwellings. He noted several other nearby settlements in sight, all populated by Muslims.[11]

In 1838, Edward Robinson described both Afuleh and the adjacent El Fuleh as "deserted".[12] [13] William McClure Thomson, in a book published in 1859, noted that Afuleh and the adjacent El Fuleh were "both now deserted, though both were inhabited twenty-five years ago when I first passed this way." Thomson blamed their desertion on the bedouin.[14]

In 1875 Victor Guérin described Afula as a village on a small hill overlooking a little plain. The houses were built of adobe and various other materials. Around the well, which Guérin thought was probably ancient, he noticed several broken sarcophagi serving as troughs.[15] In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described El Afuleh as a small adobe village in the plain, supplied by two wells.[6]

A population list from about 1887 showed that el Afuleh had about 630 inhabitants; all Muslims.[16] Gottlieb Schumacher, as part of surveying for the construction of the Jezreel Valley railway, noted in 1900 that it consisted of 50-55 huts and had 200 inhabitants. North of the village was a grain stop, belonging to the Sursocks.[17]

Old water tower at Afula station

In 1904 the Ottoman authorities inaugurated the Jezreel Valley railway, at first operating between Haifa and Beysan via Afula and soon extended to Dera'a. Work eventually continued with an extension towards Jerusalem, the connection to Jenin being completed in 1913.

The area was acquired by the Jewish community as part of the Sursock Purchase. In 1909 or 1910, Yehoshua Hankin completed his first major purchase in the Jezreel Valley. He bought some 10,000 dunams (10 km²) of land in Al-Fuleh (now Afula), which became the home of two moshav settlements, Merhavia and Tel Adashim.[18]

During the First World War, Afulah was a major communications hub. In 1917, when Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen from the British intelligence established contact with the Nili Jewish spy network in Palestine, a German Jewish doctor stationed at el-Afulah railway junction provided the British with valuable reconnaissance reports on Ottoman and German troop movements southwards.

With the advance of General Edmund Allenby's British forces into Ottoman Palestine, el-Afulah was captured by the 4th Cavalry Division of the Desert Mounted Corps, during the cavalry phase of the Battle of Sharon in September 1918.

According to the British Mandate's 1922 census of Palestine, Affuleh had 563 inhabitants; 471 Muslims, 62 Christians, 28 Jews and 2 followers of the Baháʼí Faith;[19] 61 of the Christians were Orthodox, while one was Melkite.[20]

In 1925, modern Afula was founded after the American Zionist Commonwealth completed a purchase of the Afula valley from the Sursuk family of Beirut. A quarter of the one hundred Arab families who had lived in the area accepted compensation for their land and left voluntarily; the remainder were evicted.[18][21] Jews began settling in Afula shortly after as the town developed.

By the 1931 census, the population had increased to 874; with 786 Jews, 86 Muslims, 9 Christians, and 3 classified as "no religion", in a total of 236 houses.[22]

1940s Survey of Palestine map of Afula and Merhavya

In the 1945 census the population of Afula was recorded as 2,300 Jews and 10 Muslims.[23] The town had a total of 18,277 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[24] Of this, 145 dunams of land was used to cultivate citrus and bananas, 347 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 15,103 for cereals,[25] while 992 dunams were built-up land.[26]

During this time, the community was served by the Jezreel Valley Railway, a side branch of the larger Hejaz Railway. Since 1913 it had also been the terminus station of the branch connecting it to Jenin and later also to Nablus. Sabotage actions of Jewish underground militias in 1945, 1946 and shortly before the 1948 Arab–Israeli War rendered first the connection to Jenin, then progressively the entire Valley Railway, inoperable.

• 
  Afula Beit Sheikh 1925
• 
  Afula 1928
• 
  Afula, Shapira Hotel 1928
• 
  Afula railway station 1930
• 
  Afula 1937
• 
  Workers housing, Afula 1946

Repairs to the Jezreel Valley Railway after 1948 restored service to Haifa, but only until 1949 when it was abandoned. In 2011 construction began on a large-scale project to build a new standard gauge railway from Haifa to Beit She'an with stations in Afula and other towns, along roughly the same route as the historic valley railway. Israel Railways began passenger service on the new railway on October 16, 2016.[27]

Due to Afula's proximity to the West Bank, it has been a target for Palestinian political violence.[28] On 6 April 1994, the Afula Bus suicide bombing killed five people in the center of Afula. In the Afula axe attack in November 1994, a 19-year-old female soldier was attacked and murdered by an axe-wielding Arab Hamas member.[29] Afula also was the target of a suicide attack on a bus on 5 March 2002, in which one person died and several others were injured at Afula's central bus station. In the Afula mall bombing on 19 May 2003, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up at the Amakim mall, killing three and wounding 70. This attack was claimed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Fatah movement's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

On 17 July 2006, during the Israel–Hezbollah War, Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets at Afula, one of the southernmost rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanon. Six people were treated for shock as a result of the attack. On 28 July, a rocket landed causing a fire. The rocket carried 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives.[30]

In September 2016, it was announced that seven new neighborhoods would be built, doubling the city's population.[31]