On the way to Jerusalem. Remains of armoured vehicles (1948) in Sha'ar hagai (23 km from Jerusalem).

On the way to Jerusalem, in the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway 1 you can see these rusted hulls of armoured trucks from 1948. The site (23 km from Jerusalem) is the starting point for the steep road ascending to Jerusalem and is called Sha'ar HaGai in Hebrew or Bab-El-Wad in Arabic, meaning 'the Gate of the Valley'. This used to be the only road into Jerusalem at the time of Israel's War of Independence (1948) and been the scene of severe conflicts between Jews and Arabs. Numerous convoys of trucks tried to reach the Holy City to support the Jewish defenders with food and arms; and Arabs were often successful in blocking the road and preventing these convoys to reach their destiny. On April 20, 1948 the Arabs captured Sha'ar HaGai and closed the road to Jerusalem. Jews had to to bypass the road, by building an alternative called "Burma Road" to end the siege of Jerusalem. Only during the Six-Day War (1967), Sha'ar Hagai was back in Jewish hands and the road was reopened (today, part of Israeli Highway 1). The remains of these trucks are left as such at the same spot to remind people of Israel's struggle to maintain Jerusalem as Jewish at the time of its birth (1948).