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Recommended: Touring in the Golan Heights

The Jerusalem Post has an article about tourism in the Golan Heights, including Mount Hermon, Druze villages, B&Bs in Ramot, wineries and Hammat Gader.

A budding tourist industry, which boasts a ski resort, boutique wineries and posh inns, has sprouted on the unlikely brush and volcanic rock terrain of the Golan Heights, where memories of bloody battles are still fresh.
The Mount Hermon Ski Resort, which peaks at about 2,225 meters above sea level, has some 50 days of good skiing a year, says General Manager Menahem Baruch. The resort draws about 280,000 visitors a year.

Mount Hermon ski resort

An intelligence-collecting radar station sits on the mountain’s summit, where, on a good day, a naked eye can see all the way to Damascus. The land is dotted with trenches, foxholes, and a now-empty army base captured by the Syrians in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and later retaken by Israeli troops, at the cost of the lives of more than 100 soldiers.

“The Hermon is not just a ski resort,” Baruch says.

“Since Yom Kippur [War], it has become the eyes of the nation and has taken on the significance and importance of a national site.”

In 1983, there were 6,800 Jews living on the Golan. In 2005, that number had almost tripled to 17,000, who live alongside 20,000 Druse and 2,000 Muslims, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

In the past three years, the government has invested NIS 26 million in improving the tourist infrastructure on the Golan. At the end of last year, there were 17 hotels in the Golan and nearby Upper Galilee, with 1,340 rooms available. More than 48,000 people stayed in the area in 2007, according to the Tourism Ministry.

Ramot Resort Hotel

I love the Golan and this article gives only a few of the reasons why.

The rest of the story is here.

Tagged Travels

Rabbis Want to Re-Ban Temple Mount Entrance

Haaretz:

Israel’s leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis are waging a new offensive against Jews visiting Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
Rabbis Shalom Elyashiv, Chaim Kanievsky and Ovadia Yosef sent a letter recently to Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich, the overseer of holy places in the Western Wall complex, urging him to reiterate the religious decree signed 40 years ago by most rabbis in Israel forbidding Jews from entering the Mount.
The rabbis’ efforts follow the publication in Haaretz last month of the visit of Rabbi Moshe Tendler, the son-in-law of prominent U.S. rabbi Moshe Epstein, to the Temple Mount.
Rabbi Tendler was photographed visiting the plaza atop the Mount, where the Dome of the Rock Islamic shrine now sits, igniting a firestorm of controversy in the ultra-Orthodox community. Several other prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis have ascended the Mount in recent years, including Rabbi Dov Kook of Tiberias, the husband of Elyashiv’s granddaughter.
The rabbis’ statement calls for a complete ban on entering any part of the Temple Mount complex for fear of compromising the “purity” of the area.
The declaration stated that “as time passed, we have lost knowledge of the precise location of the Temple, and anyone entering the Temple Mount is liable to unwittingly enter the area of the Temple and the Holy of Holies,” referring to the inner sanctuary of the Temple tabernacle.

The story continues here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Pyramid Pests Prohibited

If you’ve ever been harassed, cheated, bullied, pestered, deceived, or nagged and declared that even one of the wonders of the world was not worth the incessant and undesired attention of the locals, you may now have cause to consider a return visit to the Pyramids of Giza.

The monuments may be glorious, but visiting Egypt’s famed Giza Pyramids has long been a nightmare, with hawkers peddling camel rides and pharaonic trinkets hustling tourists relentlessly at every turn.
But now the hustlers are gone, as Egypt unveiled on Monday the first stage of an elaborate project to modernize the site and make it more tourist-friendly, complete with security cameras and a 12-mile fence with infrared sensors surrounding the site.
“It was a zoo,” Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, said of the usual free-for-all at the pyramids. “Now we are protecting both the tourists and the ancient monuments.”
The three Giza Pyramids have long been unusually open for a 5,000-year-old Wonder of the World, especially compared to other world-renowned sites like Greece’s Acropolis, Jerusalem’s Western Wall or Rome’s Colosseum, where security is tight and the movement of visitors is controlled.

The ABC News story continues here.

Pyramids of Giza

Tagged Egypt

Conflict Over Upper Room Construction

The Jerusalem Post reports on the legal dispute over the building next to the Upper Room.

An ancient monastery adjacent to where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus ate the Last Supper, has turned into a legal battleground for Catholics and Jews. Last week the High Court of Justice issued a temporary restraining order halting construction work by a Jewish organization in a Franciscan monastery on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion adjacent to the Cenaculum, the Latin term for the room where the Last Supper was held. The court also issued an order preventing the Jewish organization – the Institute for the Study of the Family and Family Laws in Israel – from moving people in to live in the monastery, known as the Franciscan house, just outside the Dormition Church. David Bartholdy, spokesman for Tancredi, a Catholic organization that petitioned the High Court, said the construction infringed on Christians’ freedom of worship. “This is a holy place for Christians of all denominations,” Bartholdy said in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. “Work being done there is causing serious damage to a monastery with important historical and religious value. Construction workers have already uprooted ancient floor tiling, scraped off a layer of plaster from the walls, broken down antique, chiseled doors, and all this under the supervision of the Antiquities Authority. “The construction work going on at the site raises the suspicion that someone is trying to Judaize a Catholic site and prevent freedom of religious expression.”

The story continues here.

Tagged Jerusalem

Shephelah Updates

The Shephelah, or western foothills of Judah, is an ideal site for excavations because of

1) its rich history;

2) its close proximity to universities in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; and

3) its moderate climate. There’s enough work to be done in the Shephelah alone to occupy every archaeologist working in Israel for the next 100 years.

Tel Aviv University has been approved to renew excavations at Azekah. Though it is one of the most important sites in the Shephelah, it has only been excavated by Robert Alexander Stuart Macalister in a brief dig more than 100 years ago. Among other things, Azekah is mentioned in the Bible as near the place of the Philistine encampment when David defeated Goliath. It was one of the last two cities holding out against Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. (see Jeremiah 34:6-7 and Lachish Letter #4). There are undoubtedly a lot of goodies buried under that pile of dirt.

Azekah from the northeast

Bar Ilan University has been excavating Tel ‘Eton/Tell Aitun under the direction of Avi Faust. This year was their third season of excavation and they are finding a destruction level as well as a fortress in the style of a four-room house, only larger. The destruction level seems to pre-date Sennacherib’s 701 campaign because pottery is transition form between Lachish III and IV; but also not likely to be Sargon II’s 712/711 campaign since it appears he only visited cities on the coastal plain. Scholars have suggested that the site is biblical Eglon (for more on that, see The Sacred Bridge, 128). The website is viewable in MS Internet Explorer, but not Firefox.

Tel ‘Eton, possibly biblical Eglon, from south

Khirbet Qeiyafa, located directly east of Azekah, is being excavated by Yosi Garfinkel of Hebrew University. They found a four-chambered gate dating to the 10th century B.C. with a casemate wall and two attached buildings. There was no previous occupation and the nearest subsequent occupation is Hellenistic, so it is virtually a single-period site for Iron IIA. They also found an ostracon (inscribed potsherd) with about 4-5 lines of writing, the contents of which are apparently more sensitive than Israel’s plans to bomb Iran. (This is a good reminder to thank those archaeologists who are quick to share their discoveries with all of their supporters.) The ostracon will be published by Misgav.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Shephelah

Jerusalem Updates

Joe Lauer sends along a couple of articles worthy of notice. The excavations at Ramat Rahel are featured in a 3-minute video by infolive.tv. It begins:

Deep inside of the hills of Jerusalem rests the Kibbutz of Ramat Rachel. Over the past 50 years many archaeologists have realized that hidden beneath this kibbutz are archaeological treasures beyond one’s imagination – the ruins of the palace of one of the king of Judah, along with relics from the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman era. At this site where space and time are mixed within the earth, another hidden treasure long buried underground has recently resurfaced. Just a few days ago, 15 silver coins dating from the Second Temple period were discovered inside of an ancient pot hidden in a columbarium.

The Jerusalem Post has an article on the increase of tourism to sites in east Jerusalem.

The Company for the Development of East Jerusalem reported 28 percent growth in the number of visitors to the historical sites in and around the Old City’s walls during the first six months of 2008. “More Israelis have rediscovered Jerusalem this year and they visit it more frequently then they used to do in the past,” Gideon Shamir, the company’s director-general, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. During the first half of the year, 143,967 people visited the Ophel Archeological Park, situated at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount, a 24% rise over the same period in 2007, the company said. The Old City Ramparts saw 74,728 people walk on them from January to June, a up 29% from the same months in 2007. Both sections of the Promenade begin at the Jaffa Gate; one route passes through the New Gate, Herod’s Gate and the Lions’ Gate (aka St. Stephen’s Gate), and the other stretches from Jaffa Gate to Zion Gate. Since January 1, 5,549 people visited Zedekiah’s Cave, which was opened to the public in April 2007. During nine months of activity in 2007 the cave was toured by 9,356 people; visits during April to June 2008 are up 86% from the same period last year.

The article continues here. I’m certainly happy to see these sites open again, but there has been a price. Getting into the City of David with a group now requires an advance reservation, a fast pace to stay ahead of countless tour groups, and a wad of cash. Zedekiah’s Cave cost $1 before it closed in 2000; now they charge $5 a person to keep the lights on and a guard at the door.

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem