Changing the face of the Middle East

Approaching the centenary of the Battle of Beersheba, we delve into the Australian stake in the creation of the State of Israel.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
The Battle of Beersheba is reenacted in the eponymous city on its 95th anniversary in 2012. (photo credit: KKL-JNF ARCHIVE)
The Battle of Beersheba is reenacted in the eponymous city on its 95th anniversary in 2012.
(photo credit: KKL-JNF ARCHIVE)
‘We owe the Australians a lot. If it weren’t for their soldiers, we might not have a State of Israel,” says Shlomo Benheiem, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund’s director of tourism and JNF missions.
He is speaking to a group of journalists who are on a JNF press tour in advance of the October 31 celebrations of the centenary of the World War I Battle of Beersheba, which Benheiem says “changed the face of the Middle East.”
Indeed at the very time that Australian and New Zealand cavalry made their late afternoon charge against the Ottoman forces, the British War Cabinet was drafting what subsequently became known as the Balfour Declaration. Had the Turks defeated the Australians, there would not have been a Balfour Declaration, and this part of the world might still be under Turkish rule. Indeed, it was a very close call.
While not for one moment denigrating the spunk of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, better known as the ANZACs, Zohar Tsafon, who is in charge of the JNF Planning Division in the south, shares an ANZAC legend. Most of the Australians who were in the Light Horse Regiment were from the Australian outback. They had grown up with horses and were very attached to them. The horses that they rode in battle were steeds that they had brought with them from Australia. The Turks had control of the wells, which in essence meant that the Australians could not feed their horses. If they could not get water for them, they would die. This is what propelled the ANZACs into action, though historians will say that they acted in accordance with the strategy devised by Britain’s Field Marshal Edmund Allenby.
The ANZACs were attached to the British forces, and the Beersheba triumph subsequently enabled Allenby to go on and conquer Jerusalem, and toward the end of the war in September 1918, to win the Battle of Megiddo, which was primarily fought by British, Indian, Australian and New Zealand troops who destroyed most of the Ottoman formations and chased the surviving Ottoman troops into Aleppo in Syria. Following the capture of Damascus, the war in the Middle East concluded on October 31, 1918, though the end of the war in general, or Armistice Day as it is known, was not until November 11.
After the war, the Australian soldiers were unable to ship their horses home, says Tsafon, and they were reluctant to sell them to the Egyptians, for fear that they would be turned into draft horses and abused, so they shot them, rather than have them suffer.
Benheiem notes that Australian soldiers were also here during World War II, and that there are reminders of their presence throughout the Negev. They were also in several other parts of the country, and those who came during World War I are commemorated in several places, most notably at the restored Tzemah Railway Station near the shores of Lake Kinneret, which they conquered and where there have been Australian military parades in the past. There will also be one within the framework of the Battle of Beersheba celebrations taking place at various sites from October 27 to 31. A special ANZAC delegation will be going to Tzemah Railway Station, the restoration of which was a joint project of Kinneret College, the Jordan Valley Regional Council, the Council for the Preservation of Historic Sites and Israel Railways.
In Beersheba, the JNF is heavily involved in both preservation and development projects and there are JNF flags and symbols almost everywhere we go.
Tsafon and Benheiem, together with representatives of the Beersheba Municipality, take us along the 100 km ANZAC Trail, retracing the encampment and deployment of the ANZACs in what was then a relatively barren area, and which today is in some parts a thriving metropolis.
There isn’t time to stop at all 26 points along the trail, but we stop at a few beginning at Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza Strip. It is one of Israel’s largest and most affluent kibbutzim. As we approach we see cows grazing in a huge field, with plenty of room in which to move freely. Though not established until October 6, 1946, along with 10 other Negev kibbutzim, the site was where the Australian and New Zealand troops were encamped, and where in their leisure time, they played rugby. It was a strategic area for Israeli troops during the War of Independence.
We move on to the Besor Reservoir passing the Be’eri Forest, which during the anemone season is a great domestic tourism attraction. We also pass the impressive popular bike trail and the ANZAC monument designed like a large letter A. To overcome the lack of water in the Negev, the British, during the First World War, laid a 235-km. pipeline, remnants of which still exist. Camel caravans carrying water from Egypt supplied the troops in the interim. Over the years, the reservoir dried up, but in the 1990s the Australian branch of the JNF helped finance the construction of three new reservoirs holding seven million cubic meters of water in order to irrigate 1,000 hectares of orchards and to develop agriculture in the region. The orchards are planted along the ANZAC trail.
Tsafon and Benheiem frequently stress how much Beersheba and Israel in general want to show their appreciation to Australia for its pivotal role in the history of the region and the nation, but things didn’t really get under way until 2008, following a proposal made in 2007 by Rafi Haruvi of the World War I Historical Association. He persuaded Australians associated with the Light Horse to stage reenactments in Beersheba. The idea was not entirely altruistic. Aware that tens of thousands of Australians go to Gallipoli each year for ANZAC Day memorial ceremonies, Haruvi reason that since Turkey is only a one-hour flight from Israel they could continue their journey and pay tribute to the ANZACs on Israeli soil as well, and thereby boost incoming tourism statistics.
Work on ANZAC Trail projects began in 2008, says Tsafon, and some are still in the process of completion. One of these is the ANZAC Museum, the establishment of which Beersheba Mayor Ruvik Danilevich announced a couple of years ago at a Battle of Beersheba commemoration. Officially called the Beersheba ANZAC Memorial Center, it is located in the Old City on the edge of the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery with a balcony that juts over the cemetery grounds. Constructed with the cooperation of JNF Australia and the Australian government, it is scheduled to be officially opened on October 31 by the prime ministers of Australia, New Zealand and Israel.
The Battle of Beersheba Centenary Committee spent a year and a half looking for a suitable site until a decision was reached that the most significant site would be one overlooking the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. For that reason, the museum is smaller than originally envisaged, but designers have devised a unique way to have a comprehensive exhibition in a relatively small space.
Before we arrive at the museum and the cemetery, which are our final destinations, we go to Golda Park, where there is a deep well that was dug by the British, but which today has no water. What is particularly eye-catching about it is its resemblance to a kosher mikve in depth and shape, with stairs leading from ground level to the bottom. We then move on to Beit Eshel, which is more in the nature of a memorial park to Israeli soldiers who fell in the War of Independence, but which also contains relics of the Ottoman era.
Yair Nagid, holder of the Beersheba Municipality cultural portfolio and a Centenary Committee member, provides details of the end-of-month events. On October 30, there will be a performance of the opera Nabucco at the River Park Amphitheater in the presence of delegations from Australia and New Zealand. On October 31, there will be the opening of an exhibition of contemporary Australian Art at the Negev Museum; a memorial ceremony with the three prime ministers at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery; the inauguration of the ANZAC Museum; a cavalry parade with 126 Australian riders, some of them descendants of the ANZACs who fought in Beersheba; a reception for invited guests at the Carasso Science Park; as well as separate memorial services for New Zealand soldiers at Tel Beersheba and for Turkish soldiers at the Turkish obelisk near the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery. There will also be the largest-ever kosher barbecue held in Israel, hosted by the Pratt Foundation in the Park of the Australian Soldier – but for invitees only.
Journalists are always interested in costs – especially for a mammoth event of this kind, but when the question is put several times to Benheiem, Tsafon and Nagid, they are evasive due to the number of government bodies, individual donors, foundations, organizations and associations involved.
“If you think Israeli bureaucracy is tough,” says Tsafon, “you should see what happens when there so many governments and other interested parties involved.”
A short list includes the Israeli, Australian and New Zealand governments, the Australian and Turkish embassies, the Beersheba Municipality, the Jewish National Fund, Israel’s Foreign Ministry and Culture and Sport Ministry, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Pratt Foundation, the Israel Police and more.
Negev hotels do not have sufficient room to accommodate the huge influx of invited guests. Those coming from hotels in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem will have to get up at 4 a.m. to travel and go through the security procedures before the start of the day’s events, says Nagid. Not the most cheerful of prospects, but the historic excitement of the day will compensate for lost sleep.