Tel Chai 3.87

Tel Hai is a name of the former Jewish settlement in northern Galilee, the site of an early battle between Jews and Arabs heralding the growing civil conflict, and of a monument, tourist attraction, and a college. It is currently part of kibbutz Kfar Giladi.The Battle of Tel Hai on 1 March 1920, which gave Tel Hai its fame, was significant, from a Jewish perspective, far beyond the small number of civil combatants on either side - mainly due to its influence on Israeli culture, both inspiring an enduring heroic story and profoundly influencing the military of the Yishuv and political strategies over several decades.In retrospect, it can be regarded as the first military engagement between the Zionists and the Arabs, though at the time itself combatants on either side did not regard it in such terms.HistoryTel Hai was first settled as an agricultural courtyard for six workers from a northern colony Metulla in 1907. The land for the outpost was purchased by Haim Kalvarisky, a clerk of the Jewish Colonization Association. Later, it was a border outpost in 1918, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. The area was subsequently subject to intermittent border adjustments among the British and French colonial powers.In 1919, the British relinquished the northern section of Upper Galilee containing Tel Hai, Metulla, Hamrah, and Kfar Giladi to French jurisdiction. The Zionist movement was greatly displeased with this, since it would have left the sources of the Jordan River outside the borders of British Mandatory Palestine, where the Zionist state envisaged in the Balfour Declaration was to be established. Therefore, the few isolated settlements in this territory assumed a strategic value from the Zionist point of view. Still, there was a fierce debate among factions and leaders of the Yishuv, some of whom advocated letting Tel Hai and the other outposts hang on at all costs, while others regarded their situation as untenable and advocated withdrawing from them.