Rich in historical sites dating back thousands of years, the Holy Land's heritage from the past century was often overlooked and neglected until the establishment of Israel's Council for the Preservation of Buildings and Sites.
By Simon Griver
Founded in 1984, the Council for the Preservation of Buildings and Sites is a branch of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), a non-governmental organization which seeks to protect the country's environment and encourage love of nature. The Council focuses its activities on sites built by Jewish pioneers before the establishment of the State in 1948.
In many cases, sites are brought to the attention of the Council by hikers, who frequently encounter crumbling buildings, and ask the SPNI what can be done.
"We usually initiate a project," says Yaakov Yinnon, spokesman of the Council, "and then work in partnership with local authorities, government ministries and other national institutions and private investors."
In most of the projects the Council only provides a small part of the funding; its main role is to raise awareness of the importance of a particular site, building or neighborhood, and propose plans for its restoration. It then leaves the national, regional and local authorities to do the work, and ensure its preservation.
One such project is the original Dead Sea Works camp, set up in the 1930s on the southern shore of the Dead Sea for the extraction of its valuable minerals (a major factory was subsequently built several kilometers to the south; DSW today has an annual turnover of more than $500 million). The buildings comprising the camp were restored and are now used as an educational center, where schoolchildren, youth groups and tourists can learn about the unique geography and geology of the Dead Sea - the lowest point on earth - and the abundant minerals which the highly salty water contains.
The Council, which has restored dozens of buildings over the years, also manages four sites: a visitors center at the Mikveh Yisrael Agricultural School (est. 1870) near Jaffa; the Ilania farm near Mount Tabor, the first modern farm in the Lower Galilee, founded in 1900; the Ayalon Institute in Rehovot, a former ammunitions factory located in a kibbutz and disguised as a laundry during the British Mandate period; and the Atlit camp on the Mediterranean coast, which the British authorities used as a detention camp for illegal Jewish immigrants, refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe.
"We work with about 100 museums around the country which are devoted to the history of Jewish settlement in the past 150 years," explains Yinnon. "We have hundreds of volunteers - including lawyers, architects, town planners, journalists and other professionals - who help us conduct public campaigns, lobby municipal and regional planning committees and, when necessary, take action in the courts to protect worthy sites."
Over the years, the Council has helped transform and gentrify 19th century neighborhoods such as Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv, and the villages of Mazkeret Batya and Zichron Yaakov, both of which were established by the Rothschild family.
The Council has recently saved large parts of the former Damascus-Haifa railway line. "People were pulling up the tracks and there were plans to knock down some of the old stations," says Yinnon. "Some of the stations in the Jezreel Valley are especially beautiful and worth preserving, and - who knows - one day the line may be re-opened."