Court rejects Caesarea residential neighborhood
12/24/2012 23:20
After 7-year legal battle, Jerusalem court rejects plan to build neighborhood over site off coast of Aqueduct Beach.
Caesarea Maritima national park Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Following a seven-year legal battle, the Jerusalem District Court has decided to
reject a plan to build a neighborhood over a site off the coast of Aqueduct
Beach, just north of the ancient city of Caesarea, the Antiquities Authority
announced on Monday.
The decision, which was made on December 13, denied
the appeal of the Caesarea Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Development Corporation
and thereby determined that a residential neighborhood would not be cropping up
on the Aqueduct Beach.
Approval of the plan would cause “irreparable
damage to ancient remains, harm the cultural heritage of the State of Israel, as
well as eliminate one of the important archeological sites of the country,” the
Antiquities Authority had expressed in its official position to the
court.
While the developer argued in the appeal that a rejection of the
project would constitute expropriation of land by the Antiquities Authority, the
court decided this was not the case, due to the fact that it did not rule out
the possibility of tourism development of the area. Likewise, the court rejected
the developer’s argument that the court was taking the Antiquities Law to an
extreme by siding with the Antiquities Authority, as the findings in the
Aqueduct area are not ones of relatively great importance.
The court
responded by citing a High Court of Justice ruling from 2009 that “it is
necessary to consider the fact that Israel is indeed a young country, but has
deep roots in human history, and its lands are saturated with ancient remains of
human civilization,” according to the Antiquities Authority.
“This is a
most important legal precedent, that for the first time a court determined that
there is a collision between the important values of developing the country and
preserving its ancient cultural assets – with the latter ending up on top,” said
Radwan Badchi, an attorney for the authority.
“This court decision also
enables the Antiquities Authority to influence the planning process when it
comes to an ancient site.”