Wadi Qelt

The 15,000 ha site has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports populations of Eurasian eagle-owls, griffon vultures, Bonelli's eagles, and lesser kestrels.[2]

Joshua 15:7, 18:17 mentions Adummim in connection to an ascent leading up from Jericho towards Jerusalem. The ascent of Adummim, or its lower part, is identified with Wadi Qelt.

The stream Chorath or Cherath, mentioned in 1 Kings 17:3 as one of the hiding places of the prophet Elijah, has been identified by some with Wadi Kelt at St. George's Monastery.[3] Other identifications have also been proposed.

The Wadi has sometimes been identified with the biblical Perath mentioned in Jeremiah 13:5.[4]

It's possible that the Psalmist had Wadi Qelt in mind when he wrote Psalm 23.

A tradition holds that this is the place in the desert where Joachim, the father of the Virgin Mary, has prayed to be blessed with a child and received the promise from God's angel, as narrated in the apocryphal Proto-Gospel of James.[5] A Cave of St Anne, inhabited by hermits until a few decades ago, is connected to this tradition.

St. George's Monastery,[4] also connected to the Marian tradition, is built into the wadi cliffs a short distance upstream from the Cave of St Anne.

Qubur Bani Isra'in are very large Bronze-Age stone structures, which rise from a rocky plateau overlooking Wadi Qelt.[6]

Several aqueducts have been found along the stream, the oldest dating to the Hasmonean period (2nd century BCE).[1] The aqueducts transported water from three main springs, down to the plain of Jericho.[7]

The winter palaces of Hasmonean kings and Herod the Great stood at the lower end of the valley, where it reaches the Plain of Jericho.[8] A structure within the Hasmonean royal winter palaces, identified by its excavator, Ehud Netzer, as a synagogue, is now known as the Wadi Qelt Synagogue, is believed to be one of the oldest synagogues in the world--[9][10] although its identification as a synagogue is contested by many scholars.

During the First Jewish war with Rome, insurgent leader Simon bar Giora is said to have held out in caves in this valley, known formerly as the Pharan brook.[11]

Wadi Qelt contains monasteries and old Christian locations.[1] According to tradition, the first monastic settlement of the Judaean desert, the Pharan lavra, was established by St Chariton the Confessor towards the end of the 3rd century in upper Wadi Qelt,[12] an area known to the Greek Orthodox as Pharan Valley.

The Monastery of Saint George was founded by John of Thebes around 480 AD, and it became an important spiritual centre in the sixth century under Saint George of Choziba. Hermits living in caves in nearby cliffs would meet in the monastery for a weekly mass and communal meal.[13]

Another Byzantine monastery was excavated at the site known in Arabic as Khan Saliba.[14] Its meager remains are located left at the left side of the T-junction of the road connecting the modern Highway 1 with the old road down the Ascent of Adummim (going to the right one reaches Jericho in the plain below.)[14] The 5th-century Monastery of St Adam was built there "for there he stayed and wept at losing Paradise" (Epiphanius).[14] Archaeologists found fine Byzantine mosaics at the former pilgrimage site.[15][16]

Towards the end of the 1948 Palestine war and from the outset of the Arab-Israeli war that followed, the springs of Wadi Qelt, which supplied much of the water for Jericho were a primary target for Israel's biological warfare programme, designed, by contaminating waters with typhus and diphtheria bacteria, to block the advance of the Arab Legion into the area which, in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, had been destined for the Arab population. Some evidence suggests that a well-poisoning operation may have unfolded in this area in July of that year.[17]

The area was occupied by Israel in 1967.

On December 20, 1968, Israeli lieutenant-Colonel Zvi (Tzvika) Ofer, commander of the elite Haruv unit, former Military Governor of Nablus and recipient of the Israeli medal of valour, was killed in action in Wadi Qelt while pursuing Arab militants who had crossed the Jordan.[18]