Ayalon Valley and Canada Park: Where the Sun Stood Still

The Ayalon Valley is one of the great natural corridors of the Land of Israel, a broad lowland passage connecting the coastal plain to the Judean Hills and the road to Jerusalem. Every army that has ever marched on Jerusalem from the west has passed through this valley: Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans, the British, and in 1948, Jewish convoys desperately trying to break through to a besieged city. The Bible’s most dramatic military miracle took place here, and one of the most painful chapters of Israel’s War of Independence was fought on its slopes.

Joshua and the Sun That Stood Still

When five Amorite kings formed a coalition and besieged the city of Gibeon, which had made peace with the Israelites, Joshua marched his army through the night from Gilgal to come to Gibeon’s defense. God threw the Amorite coalition into confusion, and as they fled down the descent of Beth Horon into the Ayalon Valley, the Lord hurled great hailstones from heaven upon them: “more died from the hailstones than the Israelites killed with the sword” (Joshua 10:11). Then Joshua spoke the words that made this valley famous: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon” (Joshua 10:12). The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down for about a full day. The five kings hid in a cave at Makkedah; Joshua sealed it, completed the pursuit, then returned to execute them. Whatever one makes of the miracle, the geography is real: standing in the Ayalon Valley and looking up toward Gibeon to the east, the biblical narrative maps precisely onto the landscape.

The Maccabees at Emmaus

In 166 BCE, the Seleucid Empire sent a large army to crush the Jewish revolt led by Judas Maccabeus. The Seleucid generals Gorgias, Nicanor, and Ptolemy encamped at Emmaus, at the western edge of the Ayalon Valley. Gorgias took a detachment of 5,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry to make a night raid on the Jewish camp at Mizpah. But Judas learned of the plan, abandoned his camp, and marched his outnumbered force through the darkness to attack the main Seleucid base at Emmaus at dawn. Finding the camp undefended, the Maccabees routed the remaining forces and set the camp ablaze. When Gorgias returned and saw smoke rising from his own base, his troops fled toward the coastal plain without a fight (1 Maccabees 3:38–4:25). The victory demonstrated that the Jewish rebels could defeat a professional army through speed, deception, and knowledge of the terrain, and it paved the way for the rededication of the Temple that Jews celebrate as Hanukkah.

1948: The Battles for Latrun

In May 1948, the Arab Legion seized the Latrun position, a British-built Tegart police fort commanding the only road linking Israeli-held territory to besieged Jerusalem, where approximately 100,000 Jewish residents faced starvation. Over the following weeks, Israeli forces launched five major assaults on Latrun, all of which failed, with approximately 168 soldiers killed. The newly formed 7th Brigade, many of whose soldiers were Holocaust survivors who had arrived in Israel only days earlier, suffered devastating losses in the first attack on May 24-25. After repeated failures, Israeli engineers built an alternative road bypassing Latrun through the hills, a rough track that became known as the Burma Road. By mid-June, nightly convoys were delivering 100 tons of supplies to Jerusalem, effectively breaking the siege. Israel captured Latrun during the 1967 Six-Day War, and the former Tegart fort is now Yad La-Shiryon, the Armored Corps Memorial and Museum.

Canada Park

Ayalon Canada Park, established after 1967 with funding from the Canadian Jewish community, covers approximately 7,000 dunams of wooded parkland at the western entrance to the Jerusalem hills. The park is named after Canada and draws roughly 300,000 visitors annually. Walking trails wind through forests of pine and Jerusalem sage past archaeological sites spanning thousands of years: Hasmonean-era fortifications, Second Temple period ritual baths, a 3rd-century Roman bathhouse, the ruins of a Byzantine church with polychrome mosaics, and Castellum Arnaldi, a 12th-century Crusader fortress. The site of ancient Emmaus, traditionally identified as the place where the risen Jesus appeared to two disciples (Luke 24), lies within the park area and is described on a separate page.

Visit with Hoshen Tours

Ayalon Valley and Canada Park combine biblical history with nature trails. Hoshen Tours pairs them with Latrun and its monastery, the biblical landscape reserve at Neot Kedumim, the Crusader spring at Ein Hemed, and the village of Abu Ghosh.