Netanyahu Orders Reassessment of Ashkelon E.R. Move
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a task force to re-evaluate a Cabinet decision to relocate the planned construction of a reinforced emergency room in southern Israel.
Israel’s Cabinet approved by one vote on Sunday a plan to relocate Barzilai Medical Center’s planned underground secure emergency room to a site farther from the Ashkelon hospital because ancient graves were found on the site.
The task force, to be headed by the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, Eyal Gabai, was instructed to find a solution that would preserve the sanctity of the dead while ensuring the security of patients, according to Haaretz. Recommendations will be presented to Netanyahu after Passover.
Deputy Health Minister Yaacov Litzman, a haredi lawmaker from the United Torah Judaism party who heads the ministry from the No. 2 spot, initiated the change after the discovery of the bones on the site set aside for the new emergency room. Experts from the Israel Antiquities Authority have assured Litzman that the bones are pagan or Christian and may be moved, but Litzman insisted they are ancient Jewish gravesites.
The director-general of Israel’s Health Ministry, Dr. Eitan Hai-Am, resigned immediately after the vote.
The cost of moving the emergency room to a new site from its current planned site will cost an additional estimated $42.7 million. A private donor who had pledged more than $10 million for the original site is now reconsidering the donation, Haaretz reported.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
