Burma Road (Israel)

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Course of the Burma Road
Burma Road signboard
Section of the Burma Road, with INT signposts
Station on the historical nature trail

The Burma Road is a temporary road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem , during the Israeli War of Independence , was created by Jews to Latrun and Bab el Wad to get around and the besieged to reach the Jewish part of Jerusalem with supply convoys. It got its name based on the Burmastraße .

prehistory

After the UN partition resolution in November, the violent Jewish-Arab clashes increased. The Jihad Moqhaden tried by blocking the road to Jerusalem, the 100,000 Jewish citizens of the city by Jewish areas on the Mediterranean and cut off the supply, and to gain as control of Jerusalem.

From Latrun in the Schefela through the Bab el Wad to Castel , the road to Jerusalem leads steeply uphill through a narrow valley. Jewish convoys were shot at from the surrounding mountain slopes and often wiped out completely. Even the Jewish attempts to make the convoys safer with sandwich armored cars were unsuccessful. Approximately 1200 fatalities were mourned within four months. Even the capture of Castel in the course of Operation Nachschon in April 1948 could not open the Bab el Wad permanently to Jewish supply convoys. Therefore it was decided to build a 26 km long makeshift road further south. The correctness of this decision was confirmed when the British authorities handed over the Latrun police station to the Jordanian Arab Legion on their departure on May 14th .

Construction of the road

The driving force behind the construction decision was Colonel David Marcus , who was promoted to general by David Ben-Gurion for these services. For the route of the Burma Road, the course of ancient paths and old Bedouin paths was partly used.

Groups of young Jews from Jerusalem secretly worked with hand tools in rough terrain. Since the road was partially within range of Arab grenade launchers, work was often carried out at night. Various tactics were used to divert the attention of the Arabs. In the first construction phase, the makeshift road could be completed with the exception of a 4 km long gap, the bridging of which was initially not possible due to steep inclines and loose ground. Temporarily, the supplies were carried through this gap on foot by hundreds of helpers at night.

Since the road existed as a natural slope, it was foreseeable that it would no longer be usable with the onset of winter rain. In a second construction phase, in which volunteers, Orthodox Jews and friendly Arabs from Abu Gosch also took part, it was therefore expanded and paved to a width of 5 m. The gap in the route was also closed. The incline was overcome by a serpentine road, the subsoil was solidified with brought rock and grating. To protect this important lifeline for Jerusalem from Arab attacks, several, in part already abandoned, Arab villages in the vicinity were captured by the Hagana and hostile Arab populations were expelled.

After a construction period of just eight weeks, the road was open to traffic on June 9, 1948. It took the Ottomans eight years to build a road link between Jerusalem and Jaffa. Later, during the British mandate, a similar road construction project took two years.

Operation Hashiloah

A pipeline for drinking water was built parallel to the Burma Road, which was supposed to supply the Jewish Jerusalem with essential goods . The name of the project Haschiloach is based on the pond of Siloam , with which the water supply of the city was secured from the Gihon spring through a tunnel in historical Jerusalem .

On behalf of the Israeli Defense Ministry, workers from the state water supply company Mekorot were drawn from all over the country to build the pipeline around the clock within 30 days. In this way, Latrun was bypassed and Jerusalem was reconnected to the water system of the Mandate period. The building material was imported from the USA and temporarily stored as early as 1945. In 1953, 1979 and 1994 three more drinking water pipelines were built to Jerusalem. The Haschiloach pipeline is no longer in operation today; metal pipes from the old pipeline are still present along the hiking route.

Further development

Until the Six Day War in 1967, the Burma Road was the supply artery of West Jerusalem. After the conquest of Latrun on June 7, 1967, the original road to Jerusalem could be used again, which was modernized and expanded in the following years.

Today Route 44 runs partly on the Burma Road. A 12 km long section of the old route is signposted from Latrun as a hiking trail and historical educational trail, which is also part of the Israel National Trail .

Literary appreciation

The work of David Marcus and the construction of the Burma Road is also told in the fourth book ( Wake Up, My Honor ) of Leon Uris ' novel Exodus (novel) .

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