From Dan to Eilat
The surprising genesis of Israel's national trail
“It is natural for a man to want to walk through his country.” Ori Dvir, creator of the Israel Trail
The Israel Trail is one of the country’s most attractive features. Stretching for 1,040 kilometers from Israel’s northern border with Lebanon to its southern border with Egypt, it takes an average of 45-60 days to complete and is hugely popular. Some complete it in one go, while others prefer to do in stages. Its waymarkers are white, blue, and orange, symbolizing Mount Hermon, the Mediterranean, and the Negev Desert. Inaugurated in 1995, the story of its creation is less known, and is rather surprising, especially from today’s vantage point.
Its story is told in the excellent Walking the Land: A History of Israeli Hiking Trails by Shay Rabineau, Assistant Professor of Israel Studies and Associate Director of the Center for Israel Studies at Binghamton University. The Israel Trail was a culmination of nearly a century’s worth of Zionist efforts to pave trails across Mandate Palestine and then Israel, the work of Ori Dvir, a pioneer of Israel trail markers, who was inspired by an article about the Appalachian Trail. “When will a person or an organization arise to initiate also in our Land a long hiking trail, of hundreds of kilometers, from Dan to Be’er Sheva, or from Metulla to Eilat?” he asked after reading it.
This was in the 1980s, at a time when the Likud were in power and settlements were being built throughout the West Bank. As Rabineau notes, though:
in many ways, it [Shvil Israel] represented a departure from the direction Israel’s culture of yedi’at ha-aretz [knowledge of the land] had begun to take under the influence of the settlement movement. Remarkably, even as national-religious Jewish youth marched through the West Bank in an effort to conquer territory with their feet, Dvir created a national trail that did not visit the occupied territories, Jerusalem, or even Masada, but one that did highlight Israel’s ethnic and religious diversity.
This decision was controversial. Dvir, for his part, never publicly spoke about political issues, although perhaps hints can be gleamed from the fact that he was a member of Hashomer Hatzair in his youth. Either way, he pointedly didn’t adopt the position that hiking trails should be used to emphasize ownership of the land: “My position, which doesn’t necessarily represent my political stance, was that we would mark nice paths through any place in which it was possible to walk.”
So he marked trails on both sides of the Green Line, except when the right tried to use this for its own purposes. This is why he didn’t mark trails around the new field school in Ofra, the northern West Bank, and the area around Hebron. He also used his knowledge of Arabic and Christianity and Islamic lore in his writings, and his book Nekudat Chen was even published in Arabic.
In the Bible, the boundaries of the land of Israel frequently differ but one of the most common formulations is “from Dan to Beersheva.” Today Tel Dan is on the northern border with Lebanon and Beersheva is in the heart of the northern Negev, so the trail runs from Dan to Eilat in the far south, for much of the route following the old Via Maris (Way of the Sea), an ancient trade route that linked Egypt with Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. Even here, though, Dvir left a tantalizing possibility, one that sounds like science fiction today:
The possibility was raised that ‘when peace comes,’ we could prepare two extensions of the trial: one, along the sea, would ascend into the Judean Mountains via the corridor to Jerusalem and would descend again to the plain and the Negev; and the second would eventually continue along the ‘way of the patriarchs,’ or the ‘mountain way.’
When considering the route for the Israel Trail, Dvir applied nine principles, which included keeping it away from politically contentious areas like the West Bank, and from cities (which is why it didn’t approach Jerusalem), an emphasis on diversity in the ethnic communities and religious sites visited by the trail, and that it would be representative of the country, hence the name. “Our intention is to cross all of the parts of the landscape that exist in the Land,” Dvir said. “We also want to utilize the fact that Eretz Israel is the center of many different religions, and therefore the trail passes the sacred sites of different religions.”
What does this mean in practice? From Tel Dan, the northernmost city of the Kingdom of Israel, it continues through the Snir Nature Reserve, which contains one of the sources of the Jordan, to Kibbutz Kfar Hagiladi and the Roaring Lion monument, which commemorates those who fell at the Battle of Tel Hai. It passes through Nebi Yusha, a holy site for Muslims, who believe it to be the burial site of the biblical Joshua, before continuing on to Mount Meron, which is where Shimon bar Yochai is buried. It continues to the Horns of Hittin, where Saladin defeated the Crusaders in 1187, and the Yardenit Baptismal Site, which was set up as an alternative to Qasr el-Yahud during the Second Intifada. It continues over Mount Tabor, the site of Jesus’s transfiguration, and the fascinating ancient city of Tzippori, which has a mixture of pagan, Jewish, and Christian remains (as well as those of the destroyed Palestinian village of Saffuriya). Crossing over Mount Carmel, it passes by the Druze village of Isfiya, the artist’s colony of Ein Hod (also formerly a Palestinian village), and the First Aliyah town of Zikhron Yaakov. After passing the Roman aqueduct to Caesarea, it goes along the coast next to the Arab town of Jisr az-Zarqa, before passing Caesarea itself. Further south, it passes the ancient city of Apollonia-Arsuf and the medieval Sidna Ali Mosque, which is still in use today. Closer to Jerusalem, it passes the Latrun Monastery and the Jewish-Arab village of Neve Shalom. Then it heads up the Burma Road, which was built by Jewish forces to bypass the Siege of Jerusalem in 1948, and the Bnei Brit Cave, a memorial dedicated to victims of the Holocaust. Finally reaching the south, it heads to Tel Azekah, looking out on the Valley of Ellah and the traditional site of the battle between David and Goliath, the UNESCO site of Beit Guvrin, and one of Israel’s newest national parks, Tel Lachish (which I wrote about here). Further south, now on the edge of the desert, it passes Yatir Forest, Israel’s largest, before finally emerging into the desert and Tel Arad. Now in the Negev, it passes the breathtaking Small Makhtesh, the Hatira Waterfall, and the Large Makhtesh. Deeper into the desert, it passes through Mitzpe Ramon and the magnificent Makhtesh Ramon, the ancient caravanserai of Moa and Timna National Park, before finally reaching Eilat and the beginnings of Africa.
Just writing the trail’s highlights is a thrill, and a reminder of the dream to one day walk the trail in its entirety. It’s also a reminder of the magnificent, diverse history of the land, one that the older generation of Zionist pioneers did not seek to hide. This is not a neutral “land of three faiths” narrative but one in which the Jewish claim to sovereignty can coexist with the other histories that have developed here. It is one born out of the optimism of its time; the Israel Trail was inaugurated in Pesach 1995, just a few months before the assassination of Rabin. In Arabic, it was called Darb al-Balad, “Trail of the Land” or “Trail of the Country.”
If it were being created today, it is hard to believe that the Israel Trail would follow the route that it does. But it’s there now, a fact on the ground, a single route through the land that continues to attract all kinds of Israelis and tourists. It represents a confident, outward, welcoming Zionism that might seem naïve today but has not yet been wholly extinguished.
The Israel Trail has inspired new trails: the Jesus Trail, the Abraham Path (a Palestinian initiative), and the Eastern Israel National Trail, which will be the subject of next week’s essay.