Castel National Park

Castel National Park (Hebrew: גן לאומי קסטל) is an Israeli national park, which consists of a fortified summit in the Judean Mountains, at the site of the former Palestinian village of Al-Qastal, known to Hebrew-speakers as HaCástel, "the Cástel". It is located 8 km west of Jerusalem on the road linking it to Tel Aviv (Highway 1).

The site is mostly known as the place of the key battles of Operation Nachshon, which were fought there in April 1948 during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Fierce battles that claimed many lives took place there as Arabs and Jews fought for control of the site, which overlooked the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. Castel exchanged hands several times in the course of the fighting. The tides turned when the revered Arab commander, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, was killed. Many of the Arabs left their positions to attend al-Husayni's funeral at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday, April 9. That same day, Castel fell to the Israeli forces virtually unopposed.

The national park includes a memorial for the Israeli soldiers who died there, including a monument designed in 1980 by Yitzhak Yamin and a memorial to the convoys that tried to break through the blockade of Jerusalem.

Text adapted from “Castel National Park” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castel National Park ranks #3,777 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #16 of the 25 mapped in Israel. 12 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Jerusalem, 9 km away. It is one of the 109 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of the Levant. See how Israel compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗