The area which became Yarkon Park, showing Jewish land ownership (green shading) in June 1947. Light green is land in private Jewish ownership and dark green is JNF land.Seven Mills sign in Yarkon Park: “Nothing remains of the impoverished Jarisha village which was situated here in the past”. Noga Kadman's Erased from Space and Consciousness notes that Israeli signage and literature does not mention the Palestinian Arab population who used the mills.[3]
In 1925, the municipality of Tel Aviv invited urban planner Patrick Geddes to prepare an expansion of the city towards the Yarkon, which was considered the city's natural border. Palestinian Arab and Jewishfarmers grew vegetables and maintained orchards on the banks of the river, and Geddes suggested a park should be established on the Yarkon's southern bank.[2]Planting of trees began in the early 1940s, starting on the river's southern bank and expanding eastward with the city, though at that time, without a comprehensive plan. This was implemented for the benefit of the city's inhabitants, predominantly Olim from Europe who were unaccustomed to the region's climate, and with the goal of establishing Jewish ownership, European imagery, and a callback to a biblical landscape likely more verdant than that of the region in the 20th century.[2]
1948 brought about unprecedented change to the region. The mass displacement of Palestinians, along with urban overcrowding caused by the arrival of one million Jews from Europe and the Middle East presented Prime MinisterBen Gurion with an opportunity to establish new parks. In 1950, the government of Israel established 175 hectares on the northern bank of the Yarkon, for the purpose of establishing a park, and a planting project then began on the Yarkon's northern bank.[2] This northern area had been within the village lands of Al-Shaykh Muwannis; today the park also covers parts of the village lands of Jarisha, Al-Mas'udiyya and Al-Jammasin al-Gharbi.[4]
In 1959, the Mapai (Labor Party) came into power in Tel Aviv. They were already in power on the national level. This union of local and national government allowed the inception of various large scale projects in Tel-Aviv. In 1961, damage to the Yarkon's banks lead the municipality to initiate development of a comprehensive plan for Yarkon Park.[2] When it was opened to the public in 1973, it was called Ganei Yehoshua, honoring Yehoshua Rabinovich, the mayor of Tel Aviv between 1969 and 1974.[5]
Tel Gerisa is an archaeological site in the park, that has been identified by Benjamin Mazar[9] and Yohanan Aharoni[10] with the biblical Gath Rimmon. The landmark preserves the name of the historically nearby Palestinian Arab village of Jarisha, after which the Tel was named.[3]
The Rock Garden, one of the largest of its kind in the world, reflects Israel's geological diversity. In its 4-hectare enclosure, the rocks are interspersed with some 3,500 species of plants, including over 2.4 hectares of cacti. The 2-hectare Tropical Garden has a wooden walkway shaded by palm trees, leading to a small lake. The rainforest-like microclimate supports a large variety of orchids and vines.[citation needed]
Yarkon River runs through the park and reaches the Mediterranean Sea at the park's western edge, then connects into the Tel Aviv Port, an entertainment and tourism center. Despite clean-up efforts in the last few years, the river is still polluted. Despite its polluted waters, in July 2011 Tel Aviv's mayor, Ron Huldai, jumped into the water and swam in the lake. Nevertheless, the region has retained its biodiversity. It is home to an abundance of insects, water fowl, golden jackals, porcupines and mongoose.[11]
The park has six gardens: Gan HaBanim (Fallen Soldiers Memorial Garden), Gan Nifga'ei HaTeror (Terror Victims Memorial Garden), Gan HaSlaim (Rock Garden), Gan HaKaktusim (Cacti Garden), HaGan HaGazum (Trimmed Garden), and HaGan HaTropi (Tropical Garden).
Yarkon Park from Kiryat Atidim to the Mediterranean Sea
American singer Britney Spears performed in the park on July 3, 2017, as part of her Britney: Live in Concert. It was attended by a crowd of 60,000 people.[12] Due to the concert, the Israeli Labor Party delayed their election for a new chairperson by a day. It was originally scheduled for July 3, the same day as Spears's concert, but party officials feared traffic jams and that party members would choose the concert over finding a polling station.[13]
Michael Jackson performed there, on September 19/21, 1993 during his Dangerous World Tour attended by a crowd of 70,000 people in the first show and 100,000 people in the second show.[14]
Italian opera house La Scala performed a free outdoor concert of Verdi's Requiem in the park as a part of Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary celebrations, attracting about 100,000 people.[15]
American singer Jennifer Lopez performed in the park as part of her It's My Party (tour) on August 1, 2019. It was attended by a crowd of 57,000 people.
^ abKadman, N.; Yiftachel, O. (2015). Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948. Indiana University Press. pp. 110, 122. ISBN978-0-253-01682-9. Another example is the westernmost watermill in the Seven Mills compound of HaYarkon Park in Tel Aviv, described on the JNF website as "one of the five mills built along the banks of the Yarkon river in the Ottoman period." The mill was used by villagers of Jarisha, which goes unmentioned. The use of the term "Ottoman," just like the emphasis on the Crusader period of village sites, fits well the tendency of presenting the historical periods between the Jewish exile to Babylon up to the establishment of the State of Israel as a sequence of foreign occupations, while ignoring the local Arab population that was living in the country at the same time… In most cases (sixty-five), the Arabic name of the landscape feature is echoed in the Hebraized name, even if the village itself is left unmarked and unmentioned. Examples include Tel Grisa by Jarisha village in Tel Aviv's HaYarkon Park; Tsemach Beach, near which the village of Samakh used to stand; the Hadas Stream passing by Biyar 'Adas village in Hod HaSharon; the Nurit Spring once serving the village of Nuris on the Gilbo'a ridge, and the Nah.ash Well by the village of Dayr Nakhkhas. Ronnie Kokhavi-Nehab calls this phenomenon "present-absence," pointing out its recurrence in the names of places within kibbutzim, "such as the name of the stream flowing by the kibbutz, or a ruin remaining within its boundaries, or a grove still bearing fruit, or the name of land plots in the field."
^Meishar, Naama (2017). "Up/Rooting: Breaching Landscape Architecture in the Jewish-Arab City". AJS Review. 41 (1). Project Muse: 99–100. doi:10.1017/s0364009417000101. ISSN0364-0094. S2CID164647567. Ha-Yarkon Park was established in 1952 on the lands of the village of Al-Shaykh Muwannis. Inaugurated in 1974, this 3.5-square-kilometer lawny park also covers the lands of Jarisha, Al-Jammasin al-Gharbi, and Masʻudiya (fig. 3). [Footnote 64. "Netiʻat ha-park ha-leʼumi me-ʻever la-Yarkon," 5 May 1952 (memorandum by Seʻadiya Shoshani, the head of the Planting and Gardening Department in Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality). This memorandum announces a planting ceremony on May 13, 1952 "near the Shaykh-Muwannis village with presence of the prime minister" (translation by the author).
