The Jaffa–Jerusalem railway (also J & J) is a railway that connected Jaffa and Jerusalem. The line was built in the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem (Ottoman Syria) by the French company Société du Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa à Jérusalem et Prolongements and inaugurated in 1892. The project was headed by Joseph Navon, an Ottoman Jewish entrepreneur from Jerusalem, after previous attempts by the British-Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore failed. While the first rail track in the Middle East was laid elsewhere, the line is considered to be the first Middle Eastern railway.
The railway was originally built in , later rebuilt to and then to . The line was operated by the French, the Ottomans and after World War I, the British. After its closure in 1948, it was re-opened by Israel Railways in 1949 as the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem railway, although since 2019 this designation is instead used to refer to the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem railway – an electrified dual-track railway line constructed during the 21st century that employs extensive bridging and tunneling along a faster, more direct route between the two cities.
History
Early proposals
Sir Moses Montefiore spoke of establishing a railway between Jaffa and Jerusalem in 1838. He met with Culling Eardley, who was also interested in the project, but stated that he would not be part of it if religious institutions would be involved. In 1856, he contacted the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, and discussed the construction of a railway. Temple supported the plan, commenting that it would benefit both Britain and Turkey. A meeting was organized with the Ottoman Grand Vizier Aali Pasha upon his visit to London on May 20, 1856, where an agreement on the principles was signed. As a result, Laurence Oliphant, an author and businessman who became a Member of Parliament in 1865, also put his force behind the project. On December 8, 1856, Count Paweł Strzelecki, also involved in the project, sent a message from Istanbul that the Ottoman government was not willing to provide land for the construction, and the project withered.
In 1856, General Francis Rawdon Chesney traveled to Palestine to survey the land for a railway in the company of Sir John McNeil, a railway expert. After examining two possible routes, he deemed a rail line to Jerusalem too expensive, estimating construction costs at 4,000–4,500 pounds per kilometer. McNeil then proposed a short line from Jaffa to Lydda only, and a macadam road from there to Jerusalem (which would cost only 150 pounds per kilometer). Chesney did not give up, contacting Sir Arthur Slade, a general in the Ottoman army, who supported the plan for a railway in what is today Iraq. Slade opposed a Jaffa–Jerusalem line, which he believed would benefit England and be against Turkey's interests. Although Montefiore was involved in it, nothing came of Chesney's initiative. According to another account, Montefiore backed out of the project when Culling Eardley reiterated during a meeting that the railway would serve Christian missionary activity.
On his fifth visit to the Holy Land in 1857, Montefiore brought with him a British railway engineer who proposed the construction of the railway along the Refa'im Stream, to reduce construction costs and to allow the railway to be close to a source of water. He lost interest in the project in 1862, however, when his wife died on Rosh HaShana. In 1864, the German-American engineer Charles Frederick Zimpel proposed building several railways in the Syrian province (including Palestine) to the Ottoman authorities, that would allow the start of construction if Zimpel would be able to gather the necessary funds within half a year. In 1865 Zimpel published a pamphlet with his own survey of the region, including a French-language map of the planned route, which was very similar to the route used today. The main differences were two sections near Jaffa and Ramla, changed from the original plan for convenience, that lengthened the line by about 6.5 km. Zimpel spent a year in Constantinople attempting to gain a concession for the railway's construction, to no avail.