Police station (Palestine)
The construction of fortress-like police stations in Palestine began in 1938 during the Arab uprising against the British mandate. They were modeled and built under the supervision of Sir Charles Tegart , a police chief who had experience fighting civil unrest in British India . The police stations were designed to offer the crew protection against shell fire and enemy attacks behind thick reinforced concrete structures and to ensure supplies even during months of sieges. Numerous loopholes were set into the outer walls for defense . All openings were secured with massive steel shutters and steel doors. It was characteristic in many cases that the building was towered over by a massive fortress tower.
For 2.2 million British pounds , 69 such Tegart forts were built in an astonishingly short time. The first emerged on the northern border against the smuggling of arms from the French mandate areas of Lebanon and Syria , which Tegart's fence was also supposed to defend. Other police stations were built at strategically important points such as transport hubs, river crossings and seaports. The smallest were designed for a crew of around a hundred men and the larger could serve as headquarters.
After the withdrawal of the British mandate in 1948, the police stations passed partly into the hands of Jewish and partly into the hands of Arab armed units. In the Palestinian War , some police stations were hotly contested, such as the one in Latrun , which blocked access from the Mediterranean coast to Jerusalem in the battles of Latrun , or the one in Iraq-Suweidan near Kibbutz Negba , which controlled the road to the North Negev and in the there is now a museum of the Givʿati Brigade . In the course of the war, the police stations proved their firepower and their ability to resist even the most violent attacks.
Many of them still serve as police stations. Some have been rededicated as prisons and two forts are now museums.
Web links
- Kevin Connolly: Charles Tegart and the forts that tower over Israel. BBC News , Jerusalem, September 9, 2012, accessed December 18, 2012 .