II. Draining the Hula

Projects to regulate the Hula Valley are documented from relatively early times. Even in the Roman and Byzantine periods, the spring sources of the Jordan were used for irrigation. Around the year 1260, Sultan Baibars built bridge of B’not Ya'aqov (Jisr Banat Ya'qub), below the outlet of the Jordan from the lake. Karmon, 1960) considers that the arches of this bridge narrowed the riverbed, with the result that the winter levels of the lake rose and the swamps expanded northwards.

Between 1887 and 1905, under Turkish rule, there are reports of several attempts to improve the drainage of the lake and swamps by widening the outlet of the Jordan from the valley, and by replacing some of the old bridges by hanging ones. Such activities were continued during the British rule, after 1917. Just before World War I, the Turkish authorities established a "Hula Drainage Concession". The British “Palestine Land Development Company” took over, this concession in 1933,, and plans were drawn up to drain and irrigate the valley: this impending work brought scientific expeditions to the area.

During the 1930s it was estimated that 70% of local adults were infected with malaria, and in some villages few, if any, children lived beyond the age of two. Only the constant influx of refugees and new settlers ensured that the human population did not disappear altogether. From 1940, new measures were taken. Irrigation canals were purged of their vegetation, the water dosed with kerosene, and improvements in health care were introduced, but it was not until 1945, with the introduction of DDT, that the war against malaria was won.

After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Jewish National Fund decided to undertake a drainage project. The bed of the Jordan, south of Lake Hula, was deepened and straightened for a distance of about 4.5 km (Karmon, 1960). While the water level was maintained artificially by a dam at the outlet of the lake, floating dredgers dug the two main drainage canals, the Eastern and Western Canals, which met in the center of the former lake to form the Central Canal, which now constitutes a part of the River Jordan. At the northern edge of the peat area, the Northern Canal was cut to connect the Eastern and Western Canals. The final phase came with the removal of the dam at the southern tip of the lake, in November, 1957.

Emptying the lake was calculated to take no more than 48 hours, but huge amounts of mud and debris blocked the outflow, until the winter floods cleared the outlet. By the summer of 1958, the whole swamp and lake area had dried out, with the exception of an area "left in its natural state, to form a nature reserve and national park” (Karmon, 1960). In the summer of 1958, fields of maize planted in the area of the old lake gave bumper crops without any fertilization. Gradually, however, not least because of frequent flooding, the agricultural value of the reclaimed land continually decreased. Today it is largely recognized that in the long term, the drainage of Lake Hula was, even from the economic point of view, only a limited success.

Even in the early phase of the Nature Reserve, some water plants disappeared from the Hula, e.g., the Palaearctic species of Hydrocotyle vulgaris and Hydrochatis morsus-ranae and the tropical aquatic fern Marsilea minuta. In addition, some 120 faunal taxa have not been seen in the Hula since it was drained. For example, one of the most common fish of the original lake, Tristramella simonis intennedia, disappeared from the Reserve, even though other fish species like Pseudophoxinellus kervillei and Acanthobrama hulensis survived. The Hula was a very diverse and rare ecosystem and an important phytogeographic meeting zone for holoartic and paleotropic species, such as the endemic fish Mirogrex terraesanctae hulensis from northern origin and the tropic Clarias lazeral.
Many taxa, such as crustaceans, insects and mollusks suffered heavy losses from the very beginning of this new landscape.

The main aims of the drainage plan were to eradicate malaria and to convert the swamp into arable land. The project became the standard bearer of the entire Zionist movement to resettle the land and re-establish the Jewish National Home in the Holy Land.