|
 Pardes Hanna - Karkur has many faces. It's comprised of old time farmers and new immigrants; upper class members and people of limited resources; seekers of alternative spirituality and orthodox Jews. And located in the middle is a pluralistic section of Israel's population. Pardes Hanna - Karkur is a bit shy, and some would add old fashioned. It isn't small anymore, but it's certainly modest in character. It might not have the "style" characterizing other settlements in the region such as Zichron Yaacov and Binyamina, but people looking to escape the crowded streets of the Dan region, who are celebrities among others, find the peace and quiet they were searching for, and usually in a far lower and more reasonable price than that of a similar property in neighboring settlements. In general, people who have a liking for it will never even consider living anywhere else. The many faces of Pardes Hanna - Karkur are mostly pastoral, rural and agrarian, but others are also shabby, and some would say neglected. The good news are that Pardes Hanna - Karkur has been reinforced and refreshed in the last year in terms of development, felt in many parts of the settlement. More paths have been paved, the existing gardens were improved and additional public gardens were allocated. We are also providing a price review - people who share our belief that this trend will continue and increase as stronger population comes to live in the settlement, can find real-estate bargains in Pardes Hanna - Karkur today that were present in Zichron Yaacov and Binyamina up to ten years ago. And we will certainly tell you that people who purchased properties in Zichron Yaacov and Binyamina when things were dormant do not regret their decisions today.
Education in Pardes Hanna is also varied, and it has many schools and boarding schools, possibly because of the large green areas entrepreneurs were able to purchase when the area was very rural. Some earned an excellent reputation, and the educational institutions of Pardes Hanna - Karkur educate and train thousands of students from around the country every year.  Local work used to be based on agriculture, light industry and services. But saying it doesn't have modern attractive places of employment, such as hi-tech, will be purely semantic. Caesarea's industry park is located right on the city's border with Pardes Hanna, and could have been named Pardes Hanna's industrial park. It would be just like saying that it doesn't have a railway station, only because the Caesarea Development Society financed the reconstruction of "Pardes Hanna" station and changed its name to Caesarea. This beautiful station, by the way, was designed to have western entrances facing Caesarea's industrial area, and also eastern entrances facing Pardes Hanna - Karkur, but financial issues are the reason that there's only an entrance and parking lot facing Caesarea so far. We heard that a walking bridge will be constructed very soon.
Pardes Hanna - Karkur is only a 7 minute drive from the seashore, 6 km north of Hadera, and has flat topography and land type characterizing the northern Sharon region. Its jurisdiction encompasses 23 thousand square kilometers, and according to the Main Bureau of Statistics it is inhabited by 30 thousand people (29,700 in early 2006, to be exact). In our colony territory between Wadi Ara (route 65) and Wadi Milek (route 70), Pardes Hanna - Karkur is the largest settlement, and as such, it is the center for many services, including governmental offices. Pardes Hanna - Karkur benefits from superior accessibility to the longitudinal routes 2, 4 and 6, to the railway service and route 65 (Wadi Ara) traveling east from Hadera towards Megido and Afula. This accessibility makes it a wonderful option for people who want to live in the "country", but make their living in the "city" - in Tel-Aviv, Herzeliya, Petah-Tikva, Kfar-Saba, Raanana, Netanya, Ben-Gurion Airport and other major centers of employment in Israel. Over 50 trains pass through the local railway station, and the constantly improving train traffic created an increased demand for Pardes Hanna - Karkur by people working near the railway tracks in Haifa and the Krayot region and in Tel-Aviv. Unlike the popular opinion, the Main Bureau of Statistics stated that Pardes Hanna - Karkur is growing at a much lower rate than Zichron Yaacov and Binyamina, and it predicts a marginal growth of 0.7% this year as well, unlike Zichron Yaacov's 4.4% and Binyamina - Givat Ada's 3.5% We'll start by reviewing Karkur. Why is that? Well, here's a historical fact you probably didn't know about Karkur. In spite of common knowledge, Karkur is the older settlement in the duo known as Pardes Hanna - Karkur. Another thing you probably don't know is that Karkur, as Hadera and Rehovot, but unlike other settlements in the area, was established as a colony not through the regular Rothschild channel. "Hachsharat Hayeshuv" purchased 15,000 square kilometers of land in Karkur for the Zionist Federation during 1913, from families in Jenin and Haifa, and sold them in the next two years to Itzhak Shlezinger, "the Odessan committee" and "London Estate". Some of the land used not only to colonize Karkur but also to found Moshav Gan Hashomron and Kibbutz Ein Shemer. The total cost for acquiring the land was 400 thousand Franks, or 25 Franks per square kilometer, but remember that 400,000 Franks were then worth 2 million us dollars, an astronomical figure for that time even if calculations show that one square kilometer cost about 130 dollars. "Beit Ahuza" of "London Estate" in Karkur, built in 1921 by Tuvia Krupik, a Zichron Yaacov contractor, is now the public library building in Karkur, and other structures built in the past such as the synagogue are landmarks of the local architecture. Until the settlers' arrival, lands were protected by "Hashomer" organization, which planted eucalyptus trees, not for ornamentation but in order to go around a Turkish law that allowed the Ottoman sovereignty to expropriate lands if they were not processed for three full years. The many eucalyptus trees characterizing the area are a remnant of "Hashomer" guards. The colonists, and also the colonizing settlements, have suffered many hardships in the area. Itzhak Shlezinger went bankrupt and had to sell lands to the Jewish Fund. London Estate's idea of selling lands to Jews in England who will immigrate once they are processed was a partial success. Lands were processed but the English settlers did not arrive, and "London Estate" also had to join the Jewish Fund in order to implement the settlement ideology. Eventually, a collaborative settlement was established, partly private and partly a Moshav, in a joint initiative of the Jewish Fund and "London Estate", and the vision became reality. The new settlement was forced to deal with "labor pains" and harassments by the local Arabic population. After the declaration of independence, neighborhoods "Neve Efraim" for Yemen immigrants and "Neve Oved" for workers were established. In 1969 the two colonies Pardes Hanna and Karkur were joined together to form one settlement Pardes Hanna was established 16 years after Karkur, as a colony founded by PIKA in 1929 along with many settlements in the area. Pardes Hanna is named after Hanna Rothschild, daughter of Meir Rothschild who founded the English Rothschild Banking Empire, and uncle of Edmund "Binyamin" De Rothschild (the well known donor). Hanna Rothschild was married to English Prime Minister Rosebery Primrose, and mother of Neville Primrose, Deputy to the Foreign Affairs Minister in the government of England, who was killed in Israel during the First World War, in which he served as an officer. The word Pardes (orchard) in the colony's name expressed the intentions of its founders, and indeed many orchards were planted in its area, and the magical scent of citrus fruit in the spring is still one of Pardes Hanna - Karkur's trademarks. During the British Mandate, Many British army camps were located near Pardes Hanna - Karkur, and they later became transit camps that turned to neighborhoods. One of their last remnants is today's military camp 80. During the 50s, a transit camp for random and rapid immigrant reception was established in Pardes Hanna. The transit camp was later attached with settlements Tel-Shalom and Neve Efraim, now neighborhoods east of Hanadiv Rd. This road (route 652), from Hanna Junction (Camp 80) crosses Pardes Hanna en-route to Binyamina and Zichron Yaacov (where it eventually becomes Hameyasdim St. in the colony). PIKA Rd. (route 650) crosses the settlement en-route to what we now call Alon Junction. Another important road crossing Pardes Hanna is Sea Rd., ending in the railway passage right before Caesarea's industrial area. There's also far more ancient history. In the area of Pardes Hanna - Karkur, the remains of a Byzantine settlement were discovered, and in addition there is a ruin on top of a hill in Tel-Shalom of Karkur which is a large roman structure, apparently a mausoleum.  Schools in Pardes Hanna are considered excellent. The community is highly involved in school activity, for instance "Maagalim", a voluntary social community organization working on social and cultural activities and integrates community activities with schools on holidays and remembrance days. Pardes Hanna - Karkur's main high school is the agricultural school. The agricultural school was founded in the early 30s, in order to create an educational framework where children of farmers can acquire professional training. This high-school, as other educational institutions in Pardes Hanna, is a center of attraction for students, especially boarding school students from the region. Even today, the agricultural school receives most children and provides moral and professional education. The school's reputation is also expressed in the selection of study courses. For instance, it is the only high-school in Israel allowing students to specialize in veterinary, and there's more: physics, computers, literature, geography, biology, arts and more. The religious education is excellent, drawing high-school students from all around the country. Pardes Hanna - Karkur has 4 religious elementary schools, one of which in Karkur. There was an attempt to turn the religious state elementary school to a regular state elementary, but this attempt did not succeed, and the discourse on the idea still exists. The religious high-school Midrashat Noam attracts students from all over Israel. Religious Zionist girls attend the college in the near Kfar Pinnes. Elisheva high school for girls is located in Pardes Hanna. Karkur has a "holistic college", teaching and qualifying a large number of different disciplines.
In terms of real-estate, Pardes Hanna - Karkur is very heterogenic, divided into many different regions. One neighborhood is different than the other, and the price differences can be very significant at times. Nonetheless, real-estate prices in Pardes Hanna - Karkur have not increased as sharply as properties in Zichron Yaacov, Binyamina and the area, and people looking for a home in the area now have a chance, temporary according to some, to purchase a house in a magical rural environment for a reasonable price, while benefiting from the same railway service and accessibility to the center of Israel. |
