Bab El-Wad ("Sha'ar Ha-gai", باب الوادي, "The Gate of the Valley") is The entrance from the Shefela going up the Judean mountains to Jerusalem on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, 23 km from Jerusalem.
During the War of Independence in 1948, Jerusalem was besieged and separated from the rest of the State of Israel and the only way to bring food supplies to the city was to force the blockade by means of armoured cars.
Some cars still lay on the roadside as a memorial.
Bab-el-wad (Song)
LYRICS: Chayim Guri
MUSIC: Shmuel Farshko
Here I am passing, standing by the stone.
An asphalt road, rocks and ridges.
Day goes down slowly, sea-wind blows
Light of a first star, over Beit Maschir.
Bab-el-wad,
Do remember our names forever,
Convoys broke through, on the way to the City.
Our deads lay on the road edges.
The iron skeleton is silent like my comrade.
Here pitch and lead fumed under the sun,
Here nights passed with fire and knives.
Here sorrow and glory live together
With a burnt armoured car and the name of an unknown.
Bab-el-wad
And I walk, passing here silently,
And I remember them, one by one.
Here we fought together on cliffs and boulders
Here we were one family.
Bab-el-wad
A spring day will come, the cyclamens will bloom,
Red of anemone on the mountain and on the slope.
He, who will go on the road we went,
He will not forget us, Bab-el-wad.
