Ma'ayan Harod National Park

The all-year-round spring known as Ma'ayan Harod or Ain Jalut is used to feed a recreational swimming pool.[2] The source of the spring as well as other springs in the Beit She'an Valley to the east, comes from fresh rainwater that percolate into the limestone hills of Samaria and collect in an underground water reservoir beneath the areas of the Palestinian cities of Nablus and Jenin. The water emerges from the hills as they incline north towards the valleys. At this valley the waters emerge from a natural cave known colloquially as "Gideon's Cave".[4][5]

The tomb of the Hankins

The national park also contains the house and tomb of the Zionist activist and settler Yehoshua Hankin, who founded the kibbutz of Ein Harod and built a home in the valley with his wife Olga Hankin near the spring. Their house was planned as a bauhaus and construction began in the 1930s just above the spring. Pioneers of Beit HaShita who camped at the spring helped the construction.[6] When his wife got sick and passed away in 1942, Hankin buried her next to the house in a tomb inspired by the ancient Roman-Jewish tombs in Beit She'arim (Roman-era Jewish village). Hankin died in 1945 and was buried next to his wife. The tomb's entrance was designed by Israeli artists David Palombo, who designed the gates of the Knesset. For some years the tomb was a pilgrimage site for women hoping to get pregnant.[2]