During a visit to Herod’s Pools in Fasayil on Friday, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu announced that 3 million shekels will be allocated to restore the site. He said, “When I see young people voluntarily going out to restore a pool built by Herod 2,000 years ago, I know the people of Israel are on the right path.”
The visit was attended by Eliyahu and the chairman of the Knesset Education Committee, MK Zvi Sukkot, and was led by Bnei Har Even, head of the Civil Administration’s archaeology staff in Judea and Samaria. The trip came after local teenagers had spent the past several weeks independently cleaning and rehabilitating the historic pools, which are part of a heritage site dating to the Herodian period, about 2,000 years ago.
Eliyahu and Sukkot inspected the condition of the pools, watched the volunteers’ work, and discussed archaeological development plans and public access to the site with Har Even. They later got into the cool water themselves. The visit came two days after the opening of the International Days of Israeli Heritage conference at Herodium in Gush Etzion, where a restored Herod’s Pool was inaugurated again in the presence of archaeologists and intellectuals from around the world.
Eliyahu said the Fasayil project was part of a broader transformation at heritage sites in Judea and Samaria, which he said had already received about 250 million shekels in investment. He added that the Heritage Ministry is currently transferring 3 million shekels to restore the Fasayil pools and is increasing funding for heritage activities for youth at the site and elsewhere in Judea and Samaria as part of the “Derech Eretz Heritage” plan.
