Yavne'el

Remains from the Late Bronze Age,[3][4] Iron Age I–II,[3] Persian,[3] Hellenistic,[5] Roman,[3] late Byzantine,[3][4][6] early Muslim[7] and Mamluk periods have been found here.

A residential building constructed in the Umayyad period that continued to be inhabited during the Abbasid period (eighth–tenth centuries CE) has been excavated here.[7]

Remains from the Mamluk period have also been found.[6][4]

During the Ottoman period the Muslim village in the area was known as ’’Yemma’’.[8] The village was mentioned in the Ottoman defter for the year 1555-6, located in the Nahiya of Tabariyya of the Liwa of Safad, with its land designated as Timar land.[9]

A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 noted the place.[10]

In 1875 Victor Guérin visited, and described the village as rather ruined and built of basaltic stone, situated in a fertile valley.[11] In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Yemma as having basaltic stone houses, containing 100 Muslims, on an arable plain. There were no gardens or trees, but two springs were near, and the village had cisterns.[12] To the south-west of this site there was a supply of water among the rocks of the valley.[13]

The "Yamah" settlement was initially planned for 40 farms, each holding 300 dunams.[14] What is now Yavne'el was established on October 7, 1901, by the Jewish Colonization Association on lands bought from the Delaike (Al-Dalaika) Bedouin tribe by Baron Rothschild.[15][16][17] The name "Yavne'el" was taken[18] from a biblical city (Joshua 19:33) in the allotment of the tribe of Naphtali, situated in this area. The first settlers came from the Hauran region (Jewish settlers of the Hauran or "Horan" as it was called, had been evicted from there in 1898 by the Ottoman authorities),[17] joined in December 1901 by villagers from Metula.[14][16] In 1914–15, immigrant families from Yemen settled in Yavne'el.[14]

The new colony of Beit Gan was founded in 1904[14] as a moshav.[19]

Yavne’el 1937

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Yabnieh (Yamma) had a total population of 447; 82 Muslims and 365 Jews.[20] At the time of the 1931 census, Yavneel still had exactly the same population of 447; but now it was 56 Muslims and 391 Jews, in a total of 102 houses.[21]

Hitahdut HaMoshavot BeYehuda VeShomron ('Association of moshavot in Judea and Samaria'), the oldest settlement movement for private farmers in the Land of Israel, was founded in Yavne'el in 1920.

When three Jewish residents were murdered by Arab rioters on the road between Yavne'el and Beit Gan in 1937 during the country-wide Arab revolt, a new settlement named in their honour, the moshav Mishmar HaShlosha (lit. 'Guard of the Three'), was established nearby.[14]

Yavne’el 1947

In the 1945 statistics, Yavneel was home to 590 people, all Jews.[22]</ref>[23]

In 1947 an improvised landing strip in the fields of the moshava was used for landing by a transport airplane bringing Jewish refugees, twice from Baghdad and once from Italy.[24]

Moshav Yavne’el, 1948

Located southwest of Tiberias, it was declared a local council in 1951.

Many organisations were established in Yavne'el, including the Israeli Farmers Union, the Galilee Squadron and the Golani Brigade.