page_title: Naharayim
section_title: Workers' village
hierarchical_section_title: Naharayim / History / Workers' village
caption_attribution_description: English: houses in Tel Or עברית: בתים בתל אור
context_page_description: Naharayim, historically the Jisr Majami area, where the Yarmouk River flows into the Jordan River, was named by the Palestine Electric Company in a letter dated 27 February, 1929 to Palestine Railways giving "proper names" to the "different quarters of our Jordan Works" one of these being the "works as a whole including the labour camp" to be called "Naharaim" and another being the site of the "Power House and the adjoining staff quarters, offices" to be called Tel Or. Most of the plant was situated in the Emirate of Transjordan and stretched from the northern canal near the Ashdot Ya'akov in Northern Mandatory Palestine to the Jisr el-Majami in the south.
  The area includes the disused "First Jordan Hydro-Electric Power House", constructed between 1927–33 in the area adjacent to the Roman bridge known as Jisr Majami. The plant, established by Pinhas Rutenberg, produced much of the energy consumed in Mandatory Palestine until the 1948 Palestine war. The channels and dams built for the power plant, together with the two rivers, formed a man-made island. The residential area is known today as Qaryet Jisr Al-Majame.
context_section_description: A residential neighborhood was built near the plant to house employees. It was the only Jewish village in Transjordan at the time. It was designated for residence of the permanent employees of the power plant and their families, aiming to create an agricultural village at the Eastern border of the Land of Israel.
  Employees of the power station also farmed thousands of dunams of land and sold some of the produce at a company workers’ supermarket in Haifa. Due to its relative isolation and despite the limited number of resident families, the village included a clinic, a kindergarten, and even a school, established by Yosef Hanani for the children of employees.
  The families of the employees at Tel Or  were evacuated from the settlement in April 1948, leaving behind only workers with Jordanian ID cards. Following a prolonged battle between Palestinian Jewish forces and the Transjordanian Arab Legion in the area, the remaining residents of Tel Or were given an ultimatum to surrender or leave the village. Tel Or was abandoned by the residents, who were evacuated to Jewish-controlled areas across the river.
  During the 1948 War, 70 Palestinian Arab families from a village just meters away on the Palestinian side of the Jordan River populated the abandoned site.
caption: Homes in the workers village, 1932/1933
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