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Ammunition archeology: The many infrastructure works in Israel reveal memorabilia from the past

Within a week, three remains of ammunition more than a hundred years old that were buried in the ground in Israel were exposed, including a British shell from the First World War, which was found on Sunday in Ganei Tikva.

Police neutralized the victim, who was found in critical condition.

According to an expert, with the reduction of open spaces in Israel, these cases are becoming more and more common

Tags

• munitions

• Ono Valley

• The Ottoman Empire

• Israel Police

• Ganei Tikva

Eli Ashkenazi

Saturday, 20 November 2021, 09:00 Updated: 09:21

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"Bald Hill" - that's what the British called the hill that dominated the Ono Valley area.

Perhaps in the name they gave to the hill they did not flatter her much, but the British shed much blood to conquer it from the Turks, during some hard days of fighting at the end of November 1917.

This is one of the sites where the British tried to cross the Yarkon on their way north. The Ottoman Empire.

The battles over the bald hill and a nearby hill called "Yaffa Hill" lasted a week, during which the area passed from hand to hand.

The British took part in the battles of the Camel Brigade fighters and the Australian and New Zealand fighters from the Anzak Division. The Turks sent a special strike force there. Artillery fire.

This week, 104 years after the same battle that was a small chapter in the story of the great battle that took place in Sinai and Israel for nearly four years, a greeting of peace came from the past: on Monday, police sappers were called to a site west of the same hill. , Noticed an old shell.

An examination of the saboteurs revealed that it was the fall of a British shell from the First World War.

This obliges them to work gently and for a long time to neutralize the shell mechanism, for fear of it exploding.

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Greetings from the past.

The British shell (Photo: Israel Police spokeswoman)

"This is really an archeology of ammunition, it's a fascinating thing," said Ranj Ziv Livni, head of ammunition in the police sabotage department. Livni is an amateur historian who is mainly interested in the history of Israel. He has collected and accumulated over the years written material dealing mainly with ammunition used by the armies that fought for this piece of land. "This is a private craze that intersects with my work and reality," he said. And German from the period of the First World War, "he added.

Recently the same library has been used more and more. According to Livni, "Over the years, various items from the First World War period have been found, but in the past year the number of incidents has increased significantly." This is due to the reduction of open areas in the center of the country and many infrastructure works, including the construction of the light rail, which lead to greater exposure than before of old ammunition that was buried in the ground.

Although the past year has been full of these exposures, the last week has been particularly unusual - in addition to a shell found in Ganei Tikva earlier this week, a Turkish hand grenade was found in a successful moshav near Ramla, Its dating is between the First World War and the War of Independence.

Last week, two old British shells were found near Moshav Tzofit, an area where heavy fighting between the armies also took place, battles that also included artillery fire. In the middle is the Jewish settlement of Kfar Saba, which also includes many refugees deported by the Turks from Tel Aviv and Jaffa.

A month earlier, a British shell was discovered near the Mandarin Hotel in Tel Aviv. Livni reveals that about six months ago, he and the police saboteurs were urgently called to the Yarkon cemetery. It turned out that while digging a grave a large shell was exposed. The crew sailed to clear the shell before the funeral procession arrived.

Most of the ammunition exposed from those years is British ammunition, but occasionally there is also German ammunition, which was used by the Ottoman army.

Several years ago, for example, five old shells that were used by the Ottoman army in the First World War were found on the southern shore of the Sea of ​​Galilee.

The explanation is that the shells that were found were thrown during the Ottoman escape from the famous battle for a plant, which took place in September 1918, at the place where the shells were found.

Another possibility is that the shells were taken as loot by the British, who won the battle for a plant and they threw them into the Sea of ​​Galilee.

In another case a German shell was found that was so well preserved that one could read the engraving on it which he discovered was made in 1913 in the city of Düsseldorf.

"danger of death".

Police saboteurs at the arena in Ganei Tikva (Photo: Official website, Ono NEWS)

Usually the time component is a marginal component in neutralizing the old shells. The challenge facing the saboteurs stems from the advanced age of the shells. "Because a lot of time has passed, there is a risk that the explosive inside them has become more sensitive," Livni explained. "The shell casings contain sensitive materials, sometimes the shell is already rotten given the environmental conditions it has been in over the years. All of these make ammunition difficult to handle."

Livni added that the caution with which police saboteurs approach the shells even increases in light of the fear that the ammunition will contain phosphorus. "We must not take a chance; a shell that contains phosphorus may be even more dangerous than a shell that contains explosives because it is a sensitive substance that ignites on contact with air and disperses everywhere," he said.

The big fear is that citizens who discover old ammunition will think it is an item that because of its advanced age is no longer a danger and will ask to take it as a souvenir. The concern is based on cases that have already happened in which ammunition deposits that were found or taken as loot during the Israeli wars were discovered in civilian homes. The big concern is that the lack of knowledge and contempt could end in disaster.

"This is definitely a danger of death," Livni clarifies. "A citizen who does not understand the field, does not know that despite the age of the shells, the explosive inside them has remained sealed over the years and is therefore still active. Sometimes precisely because a long time has passed the danger is greater. In such a case one must immediately call the police."

The saboteurs themselves, he says, "are required for surgical work in these cases."

This week in Ganei Tikva, for example, the old English shell underwent a process of fission to reduce the amount of shrapnel and the range to which it could fly.

"This is work in an urban area, which requires extra care. This is expressed in the form of laying the shell, sometimes you have to build a dirt embankment or dig a pit, to prevent scattering fragments in the distance. There are so many variables. It's a whole Torah."

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