Wadi 'Ara

Wadi Ara (also Nahal 'Iron) (Arabic: وادي عارة‎‎, Hebrew: נחל עירון, ואדי עארה‎‎), is an area in Israel populated mainly by Arab citizens of Israel. Wadi Ara is located northwest of the Green Line, in the Haifa District. Highway 65 runs through the wadi.

Wadi Ara is a 20 km wadi (valley) in northern Israel that begins at the meeting point of Samaria, the Menashe Heights, and the Sharon plain. The riverbed begins near Umm al-Fahm and runs southwest on the boundary between the Manasseh hills and the Umm al-Fahm hills. Approximately 1 km west of the Border Patrol intersection on Highway 65, the wadi opens into the Sharon plain, and becomes a tributary of the Hadera Stream, south of Talmei Elazar and north of Tel Zeror.

Wadi Ara is an ancient historical route connecting the Israeli coastal plain with the Jezreel Valley. In the Late Bronze Age, the Egyptian king, Thutmose III, used the route, then called Aruna, to surprise his enemies, and take control of Megiddo. According to information from a stela from Armant - the king of Kadesh advanced his army to Megiddo. Thutmose III mustered his own army and departed Egypt, passing through the border fortress of Tjaru (Sile). Thutmose marched his troops through the coastal plain as far as Jamnia, then inland to Yehem, a small city near Megiddo. The ensuing Battle of Megiddo probably was the largest battle in any of Thutmose's seventeen campaigns. A ridge of mountains jutting inland from Mount Carmel stood between Thutmose and Megiddo, and he had three potential routes to take. The northern route and the southern route, both of which went around the mountain, were judged by his council of war to be the safest, but Thutmose, in an act of great bravery (or so he boasts, but such self-praise is normal in Egyptian texts), accused the council of cowardice and took a dangerous route through the Aruna mountain pass, which he alleged was only wide enough for the army to pass "horse after horse and man after man."

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