Galilee

GALILEE

In Hebrew, ha-Galil, probably meaning "the circle"; in Arabic, al-Jalil; mountainous and comparatively fertile region of northern Israel.

The Galilee region is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on the west, the river Jordan on the east, the Lebanese border in the north, and the Jezreel Valley to the south. A line running from Acre on the coast to the northwest shore of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee or Lake Tiberias) divides Lower Galilee, reaching an elevation of 1,500 feet (458 m) above sea level, from Upper Galilee, which attains altitudes of 4,000 feet (1,220 m).

Joshua and Deborah conquered the entirety of this area, which in biblical times was allotted to four Israelite tribes and later to the northern kingdom of Israel. Controlled by a series of empires, Galilee became a preeminent Judaic stronghold for some five centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, and a center of Christianity especially after the sixth century c.e. The region became part of the province of al-Urdunn (Jordan) following the Arab conquest (c. 640), then formed a crusader principality, and was later ruled successively by Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottomans, and intermittently by local potentates such as Zahir al-Umar, Ahmad al-Jazzar, and Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Zionist settlement activity, both before and after Britain's General Edmund Allenby's conquest of the area from the Ottoman Turks in September 1918, was slow in penetrating Galilee itself, whose overwhelming Arab majority caused it to be apportioned to the Arab state under partition. Conquered in its entirety by Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israel War, Galilee witnessed a smaller scale Arab displacement than other parts of the country, most of those leaving being Muslim. Since the 1960s the area has been the target of many government settlement and development projects.

See also Ahmad al-Jazzar; Allenby, Edmund Henry; Arab–Israel War (1948); Galilee, Sea of; Jezreel Valley; Muhammad Ali.

Bibliography

Horsley, Richard A. Galilee: History, Politics, People. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995.

Meyers, Eric M., ed. Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures. Duke Judaic Studies Series, vol. 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999,

Zev Maghen