Ein Hawd

Ein Hawd sits on Mount Carmel within Carmel Park, a few kilometers east of Ein Hod, the well-known artists' village.[1][2] It is an Arab community associated with the Abu el-Hijah clan and is administered as a local committee within the Hof HaCarmel Regional Council.[1][2]

The village's location inside a national park was long cited as an obstacle to separate municipal recognition. A 2005 Ynet report said authorities had previously declined to recognize the community separately because it lay within Carmel Park.[2]

Local tradition, as reported by Ynet in 2018, holds that the original village at the site of today's Ein Hod was established nearly a thousand years ago by the Abu al-Hija tribe, which was said to have come from Kurdistan and controlled a large part of Mount Carmel.[5] A cemetery clean-up project near Ein Hod's entrance was described by participants in a 2011 report as evidence of an Arab presence at the site from at least 900 CE. These are reported local claims rather than independently verified historical findings.[1]

Accounts agree that the present community emerged from residents' movement during and after the 1948 War of Independence, but they describe the circumstances differently. A 2018 Ynet feature says some residents left the old village during the war, returned after the fighting, and built homes on a ridge across the wadi.[5] Calcalist says some members of the Hijja family moved to nearby land they owned, while most former residents left the country.[4] A 2011 Jerusalem Post account states that Israeli forces overran the village in July 1948 and forced the family to leave. It reports that Muhammad Mahmoud el-Hijah and 35 members of his extended family sheltered in a wadi and established what became Ein Hawd on approximately 100 dunams of land he owned, where he had grown olives, grapes, and other crops.[1]

The former village site was subsequently used for the artists' village of Ein Hod. An Encyclopaedia Judaica entry says Ein Hod was founded in 1953 on the site of an abandoned Arab village and that its name was adapted from the former village's name, which it translates as "The Garden Spring."[6] A 2021 Jerusalem Post article says artist Marcel Janco encountered the abandoned hillside village while looking for sites to preserve and established the artists' village there in 1953.[3]

Point-in-time reports provide differing population totals. In 2011, The Jerusalem Post reported that Ein Hawd had approximately 250 residents, all belonging to the Abu el-Hijah clan; mayor Mubarak Muhammad Abu Hijah identified the community as Palestinian Arabs holding Israeli citizenship.[1] In 2019, Calcalist reported 55 families totaling 194 residents.[4] Neither figure should be treated as a current population estimate.

The village has limited land available for farming or industry, and a 2011 report said most residents worked outside Ein Hawd. Mayor Mubarak Muhammad Abu Hijah described tourism as its principal local industry, supported by small hospitality and restaurant businesses; a second restaurant was reportedly nearing completion at the time.[1] The community's proximity to the artists' village of Ein Hod also shapes its local tourism setting.

Habayit, operated by mayor Mubarak Muhammad Abu Hijah, was described in 2011 as a restaurant and guest house serving visitors to Ein Hawd.[1] Residents told Calcalist in 2019 that they had built the village's school, mosque, cemetery, and water-supply network themselves and at their own expense.[4] Nearby Ein Hod occupies the former village site and contains the artists' community founded by Marcel Janco in 1953.[6][3]

The residents of Ein Hawd spent decades pressing the Israeli government for official recognition. Mohammad Abu al-Hija began the organized campaign in 1978, when the village population was approaching 200. "We began the struggle for recognition of the village in 1978, when the population began to grow and numbered close to 200 people," he later recalled.[5] Residents sought publicity through press coverage, presentations at schools and universities, conferences, and written appeals to government offices, Knesset members, and local officials.[5]

A government decision in December 1994 called for recognizing Ein Hawd, assigned the Interior Ministry responsibility for arranging its status, and set aside 170 dunams from the adjacent national park for the village.[4] In September 2000, a planning scheme initiated by the Israel Land Authority and the Interior Ministry was deposited with the district planning committee. It provided for approximately 235 housing units on 80 dunams, with services to be addressed through a later detailed plan.[4]

Sources use different dates for formal recognition. The Hof HaCarmel Regional Council and its member communities withdrew their objections to the village's inclusion as a recognized community, and the Planning Administration approved its boundaries in December 2004.[2] Calcalist dates official recognition to January 2005.[4] A contemporaneous Ynet report says Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz signed the recognition order on September 13, 2005, recognizing Ein Hawd as a local committee within the Hof HaCarmel Regional Council.[2] A 2018 Ynet retrospective instead gives 2004, while a 2021 Jerusalem Post article says the returned residents' village was not recognized until 1992.[5][3] The sources do not establish whether all these dates refer to the same legal or administrative milestone.

Before recognition, life in Ein Hawd relied on improvised infrastructure. Residents used kerosene for lighting and cooking and obtained water through a pipe laid across the wadi from nearby Nir Etzion. They initially used sewage pits and later constructed their own network, which discharged into the wadi. Mohammad Abu al-Hija said this caused odors, mosquitoes, and illness among people living nearby.[5]

Mayor Mubarak Muhammad Abu Hijah said in 2011, "We finally got electricity when the village became recognized, and now sewage lines are being laid to the village."[1] A 2009 report said electricity had arrived roughly a year and a half earlier, but the village still lacked a proper clinic, school, and kindergarten, had no Bezeq telephone infrastructure, and continued to discharge sewage into a nearby wadi.[7] The Hof HaCarmel Regional Council reported investing millions of shekels in infrastructure, while residents said the external access road remained unfinished.[7]

The main access road, approximately 2.4 kilometers long, had been under construction for three years by 2009. The Transportation Ministry said the statutory approval process remained incomplete and that it was waiting for the relevant approvals before funding the project.[7] Village head Mohammad Abu al-Hija described the internal road work as a thin layer of asphalt over dirt.[7] As of 2018, a proper sewage system was still absent and work on the access road, begun in 2006, remained incomplete.[5]

In April 2006, the government decided to formulate a proposal to settle residents' land rights, but by 2019 the Israel Land Authority had not advanced a process to provide residents with lease contracts.[4] Residents filed a proceeding in Haifa District Court seeking a declaration of land rights and asking the Authority to sign long-term lease contracts with the community. They alleged that the access road was inadequate, electricity reached only part of the village, and basic municipal services remained absent.[4] The Israel Land Authority responded that it had established a professional team to examine the historical issue and would present its position to the court.[4]

The circumstances of the community's 1948 displacement are described differently by the sources. The 2011 Jerusalem Post account says Israeli forces overran the former village and forced the family to leave.[1] The 2018 Ynet feature says some residents left during the War of Independence and returned after the fighting, while Calcalist says the residents left during the fighting, some moved to nearby land they owned, and most left the country.[5][4]

The recognition chronology is also unresolved. Sources variously cite 1992, 2004, January 2005, and September 13, 2005.[3][2] These dates may represent different planning, governmental, or municipal stages, but the available reports do not clarify their relationship. Similarly, the claim that the original village was continuously inhabited for at least a thousand years, and the reported cemetery evidence dating Arab presence to at least 900 CE, remain statements attributed to residents and project participants rather than independently verified conclusions.[1]