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Yokneam
Country	Israel
District	Northern
Council	Megiddo
Affiliation	Agricultural Union
Founded	1935
Founded by	Jews from the Yishuv and Jewish immigriants.
Population	1,382

Yokneam Moshava (Template:Lang-he-n) is a rural settlement in Israel's North District, on the outskirts of the city of Yokneam Illit. Located to the border between the Jezreel Valley and the Plain of Manasseh, it falls under the jurisdiction of Megiddo Regional Council. Yokneam is administrated by a Local committee which elected every five years. In 2022 it had a population of 1,382.

Etymology

Yokneam is named after a biblical city state mentioned in Joshua 12:22:

The king of Kedesh, one; the king of Jokneam of Carmel, one;

History

Acquiring the lands

Totaling 17,500 dunams, the lands of Yokneam Moshava were first held by the Sursock and Tueni families from Beirut, which acquired them around 1872 and the Khouri family from Haifa, which held half of the lands. Yehoshua Hankin, one of the managers of the Palestine Land Development Company had close ties with the Sursock family since 1891 when he planned to purchase lands in the Jezreel Valley, owned by the family. Two Arab minor sharecropper villages called Qira and Qamun existed in those lands. Qira was located near the spring of the Shofet river and Qamun was located on Tell Qamun, the location of the ancient city of Yokneam. In 1924, the Sursock family initiated the deal and Hankin purchased the section of the land that was owned by the Sursock and Tueni families (8,750 dunams) for a price of 37,686 Palestine pounds. On 6 Februray 1934, Hankin purchased the other half from the Khouri family (8,750 dunams) for a price of 40,391 after years of negotiations, which ended with a deal that followed the Khouri family's bankruptcy. 70 Dunams of lands were transferred to the kibbutz of HaZorea.

Early years

In 1933, 250 agricultural land plots were offered for sale. The buyers were Jews from Mandatory Palestine as well as families from Bahrain, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Lebanon, Lithuania, Iraq and Poland. The first families arrived at the land on 2 December 1935 and populated 100 of the 250 land plots and started fencing their plots and to build permanent structures. The rest of the lands were still held by the Beduin sharecroppers from Qira who refused to leave. Yokneam was unique because lands were privately owned by the residents who later transferred the lands to the Jewish National Fund. The moshava suffered in its early years from lack of support from the authorities, undrained valley lands, hilly lands difficult for agriculture and an overall economic crisis and half of the families left. One of the reasons for the crisis was that most of the lands of accquired for Yokneam were still populated by the two beduin tribes, who inhabited the arable land in the nearby plains. Dispite most of the sharecroppers left and received compensation prior to the foundation of Yokneam, attempts to mediate between the remaining sharecroppers and the Jews failed. Another attempt was made in 1936 with the help of an influencial emir, who tried to talk with the Mukhtar of Qira, but the outbreak of the 1936–39 revolt suspended the mediation. During the revolt, militants from Yusuf Abu Durra's group put heavy pressure on the sharecroppers not to leave the lands. Following the suspention of the talks, residents from Yokneam and HaZorea tried to take lands by gradually fencing fields in september 1936 but after a violent incident the British police intervened and the lands were returned to the sharecroppers. In May 1939, after the end of the revolt, the mukhtar of one of the beduin tribes sent a letter to Hankin, telling him he is willing to evacuate the lands, because the tribe wants to move to Shefa-'Amr, the other beduin tribe later agreed to evacuate and until fall 1939 most of the sharecroppers had evacuated and the remainings stayed in Qira it self. The economic crisis ended in the 1940s, after a member of the moshava, Fritz Levinger took upon himself to administer the village Levinger was described as the "central man, the leader, the Mukhtar, the ideological leader of Yokneam". In that time, Yokneam had some disputes with the nearby kibbutz HaZorea over work, lands and water. In march 1948 the last sharecroppers fled the land over fear, following the Arab defeat during the Battle of Mishmar HaEmek.

After the establishment of Israel

In 1950, after the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, a ma'abara was built in the boundaries of the moshava, which at the time had the status of a local council and Levinger was its head until 1955. Between 1950 and 1955, the village absorbed 60 families and the ma'abara absorbed 350 families. In 1967 the ma'abara was already a town and both were splitted into Yokneam Moshava, which joined the Megiddo Regional Council, and Yokneam Illit which later turned into a city. The split was made due to the desire of the residents of the moshava to remain a rural settlement and not a developing town. Both the moshava and the town developed a cooperative relationship and built a joint industrial zone, in cooperation with the Druze towns of Daliyat al-Karmel and Isfiya. In 2013, the mayor of Yokneam Illit appealed to the interior minister of Israel, demanding to create a committee to examine an option of annexing the moshava into the city, which the residents of the moshava strongly opposed. Yokneam Illit's mayor said that the city needs space for expansion and the moshava is standing in the way.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the moshava absorbed residents from urban areas and today the moshava is a rural settlement while some work in agriculture and some work outside the moshava.

References

1. "Regional Statistics". Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
2. . Yokneam Website (in Hebrew). Retrieved 17 August 2016. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
3. Levinger, 1987, p. 153–155
4. ^ Levinger, 1987, p. 161–162
5. Levinger, 1987, p. 156–158
6. ^ "יוקנעם [Yokneam]" (in Hebrew). Mapa. Retrieved 1 August 2016.
7. "יוקנעם מושבה [Yokneam Moshava]". Megiddo Regional Council website (in Hebrew). Retrieved 1 August 2016.
8. ^ Uri, Dromi (27 September 2009). "פריץ לוינגר, יקה, חקלאי, מראשוני יקנעם ומנהיגיה, 1911-2009 [Fritz Levinger, German, Farmer, from the first of Yokneam and its leaders]". Haaretz (in Hebrew). Retrieved 1 August 2016.
9. Levinger, 1987, p. 165–166
10. Levinger, 1987, p. 168
11. ^ Ashkenazi, Eli (29 August 2013). "Galilee Mayor Opens Old Wounds in Bid to Annex Rural Neighbor". Haaretz. Retrieved 1 August 2016.

Bibliography

• Levinger, Fritz (1987). Land purchase in Yokenam area affair (Catedra, p.153 - 170)

Further reading

• Levinger, Fritz (1993). Yokneam, The Irregular Village, 1935 - 1985. Maarechet.

• Megiddo Regional Council
• Villages in Israel
• Agricultural Union
• Populated places established in 1935
• Populated places in Northern District (Israel)
• 1935 establishments in Mandatory Palestine