Template:Infobox Former Arab villages in Palestine Imwas (Arabic: عِمواس) is a former Palestinian village in the West Bank located 12km southeast of the city of Ramla in the Latrun salient. The site is often identified with biblical Emmaus. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Imwas fell under Jordanian control. In 1961 the village had a population of 1,955 mostly Arab Muslims with a minority of 40 Arab Christians. Its total land area consisted of 5,167 dunums of which only 16 was cultivable.[1]
Captured by the Israeli Defense Forces during the Six-Day War on June 7, 1967, along with with the neighbouring villages of Yalo and Beit Nuba, it was destroyed on the orders of Yitzhak Rabin, due to the corridor's strategic location which afforded control over the route to Jerusalem. Israel said the residents had aided in the Siege of Jerusalem two decades earlier, and in an attack by Egyptian commandos on Lod days before. Reports of the destruction of Imwas caused a minor controversy abroad.[2] The residents of the three villages were offered compensation but were not allowed to return.[3][4][5][6] Today the area of the former village lies within the Canada Park.
Imwas has been identified as the site of ancient Emmaus, where according to the Book of Luke (24:13-35), Jesus appeared to a group of his disciples, including Cleopas, after his death and resurrection.[7] Emmaus is also mentioned in the first Book of the Maccabees as the site where Judas Maccabeus defeated the Syrian General Gorgias, after which time it was fortified by Bacchides and was made the head of a Roman toparchy.[8] It is further relayed that its inhabitants were enslaved by Cassius, and that the city was burned to the ground by Varus after the death of Herod.[8] In the late 3rd or early 4th century, the town was rebuilt "by the exertions of the writer Julius Africanus," and the Roman authorities named it Nicopolis.[8][7] Described by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Onomasticon, Jerome is also thought to have referred to the town and the building of a shrine-church therein, when he writes that the Lord "consecrated the house of Cleopas as a church."[7]
In the 5th century, a second tradition associated with Imwas emerges in the writings of Sozomen, who mentions a fountain outside the city where Jesus and his disciples bathed their feet, thus imbuing it with curative powers. Hugeburc von Heidenheim mentions both a church and a fountain in Imwas in her 8th century work, The Life of St. Willibald.[7]
After the conquest of Palestine by forces of the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, a military camp was established at Imwas, which formed part of the adminnsitrative district of Al-Urdunn (Jordan).[9] This military camp, among others established in Tiberias and Homs, was made up of Arabian soldiers who were soon to become citizens of the newly conquered areas. The soldiers brought their wives and concubines to the camps, some of whom were no doubt captured native women. The governmental framework of the Byzantine era was preserved, though a commander-in-chief/governor-general was appointed from among the new conquerers to head the government, combining executive, judicial and military roles in his person.[9] In 639, a plague which began in Imwas and spread out from there, ended up killing some 20,000 people, including the commander-in-chief abu-Ubaydah, and his successor Yazid. The caliph Umar appointed Yazid's younger brother Mu'awiyah to the position of commander-in-chief in 640, and he served as the governor of Syria for 20 years before becoming the caliph himself.[10]
William of Tyre, describing the arrival of the armies of the First Crusade to Imwas from Ramla in 1099, notes the abundance of water and fodder available at the site. Throughout the 12th century, Eastern Orthodox Christians continued to identify Imwas with the Biblical Emmaus. In 1106-7, Abbot Daniel writes of Imwas that, "Once there was a large village here, and a church was built here, but now all is destroyed by the pagans and the village of Emmaus in empty. It was near the road beyond the mountains on the right hand as you go from Jerusalem to Jaffa."[7] John Phocas also located Emmaus in the same position.[7] Conversely, Western sources in the late 12th century identified Biblical Emmaus with another village closer to Jerusalem: Qaryat al-'Inab or Abu Ghosh. Denys Pringle and Peter E. Leach attribute the reasons for this shift as stemming from a difference in the description of the distance between Emmaus and Jerusalem in the Gospel texts versus some of the earliest Greek Gospel codices. In the Gospel texts, more widely embraced by the West, the distance is transcribed as 60 stades, whereas the Greek Gospels place the distance at 160 stades.[11]
The identification of Biblical Emmaus with two villages in the 12th century has led to some confusion among modern historians when apprehending historical documents from this time. Generally-speaking however, Abu Ghosh was referred to by the Latin Biblical name for Emmaus, Castellum Emmaus, whereas Imwas was referred to simply as Emmaus. In 1141, Robert of Sinjil leased the "land of Emmaus", which included Imwas and six other villages, to Raymond of Le Puy, the master of the Hospitallers for 500 bezants a year. In February 1151 or 1152, the terms of the lease were modified and half of the tithes from the lands in question were accorded to the Hospitallers by the patriarch of Jerusalem, William. An 1186 reference to a "bailiff of Emmaus" named Bartholomew suggests that the Hospitallers had a established a commandery in Imwas.[11]
Imwas was likely abandoned in 1187 and unlike the neighboring villages of Beit Nuba, Yalo, Yazur and Latrun, it is not mentioned in chronicles describing the Third Crusade of 1191-2. It is unclear whether it was reoccupied by the Hospitallers between 1229 and 1244. The Arab village of Imwas was established just north of where the church had been located and by the end of the 16th century, the church had been converted into a mosque, which stood for almost a century before falling into ruin.
Edward Robinson visited Imwas during his mid-19th century travels in Syria and Palestine. He describes it as "a poor hamlet consisting of a few mean houses." He also mentions that there are two fountains of living water and that the one lying just beside the village must be that mentioned by Sozomen in the 5th century, Theophanes in the 6th, and by Willibald [sic] in the 8th.[12] The ruins of the "ancient church" are described by Robinson as lying just south of the built-up area of the village at that time.[12]
In 1875, the Carmelites of Bethlehem acquired the site containing the church's ruins. The debris was removed in 1887-8, and excavations were conducted intermittently from November 1924 to September 1930 by the Ecole Biblique.[11]
Since 2003, the Israeli NGO Zochrot ('Nakba' in Hebrew) has lobbied the Jewish National Fund for permission to post signs designating the Palestinian villages in Canada Park.[13] After petitioning the Israeli High Court,[14] permission was granted. However, subsequently the signs have been stolen or vandalized.[13] On June 23, 2007, Zochrot joined the refugees of the village Imwas for a tour of the remains of their village.[15]