Monday, August 16, 2004

ANCIENT GRAVES FOUND IN TIBERIAS?
Alleged burial site could delay work on new Tiberias hotel (Jerusalem Post)
By Eli Ashkenazi

Some 2,000 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators are expected to arrive in Tiberias this afternoon for a prayer assembly to protest alleged desecration of ancient graves at a hotel construction site.

Local entrepreneurs Yair Webman and Meir Shok are building a boutique hotel that incorporates a Tiberias landmark known as "the old soldiers hostel," in the northeastern part of the city. The existing structure is a large basalt house with arch-shaped windows and painted floor tiles that served until 1948 as a Muslim girls school. Construction has begun on a foundation for six additional floors for 120 rooms with a view of Lake Kinneret. In the course of digging foundations for the southern side of the hotel, ancient remains were uncovered that may be graves, and religious authorities want to halt construction there.

Webman says that the remains found "could be graves, but the Antiquities Authority found nothing here."

[...]

No word on how old the "ancient remains" are likely to be. For more on the problem of ancient burials in Tiberias, go here (and scroll down to the update).

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