Israel is a country where the forces of geological time and human history are frequently—often simultaneously—evident. At Rosh Hanikra, on the border with Lebanon, railways tunnels built under the British Mandate lie mere meters from ancient grottoes, hollowed out over millennia by the pounding of Mediterranean waves on limestone. These caves are home to fruit bats, sea turtles, and rock pigeons, and their neighboring tunnels are the site of one of the first military acts of Israel’s War of Independence against Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt.
In 1948, Israeli soldiers in the Haganah (the paramilitary predecessor of the IDF), anticipating a Lebanese invasion through the railway tunnels, detonated the track. The remnants of the old rails can still be seen at Rosh Hanikra, just beneath the border fence to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, and just above the shimmering turquoise waters of the grottoes.
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