Rosh Hanikra is host to one of the more fascinating geological formations, the Blue-water cave grottoes at the base of a white chalky cliff-face which opens up into these spectacular grottoes. They are situated at the top end of Israel, on the shores of the Mediterranean and north-west of the Galilee region and just meters away from Israel’s border with Lebanon. Soldiers are permanently stationed here to protect Israeli citizens and tourists alike. The residents of Rosh Hanikra kibbutz manage this tourist site, which in turn provides funding for its various agricultural and other interest.
Strategically, Rosh Hanikra could one day be part of a proposed Cairo-Haifa-Beirut rail link. The sea travels some 200 metres into the grotto. In 1968, a 400-metre long tunnel was dug between the grottoes which gives it more tourist appeal, especially when visitors can easily get to the grottoes by cable car, which descends at a 60-degree gradient from the top of the cliff down to the tunnels. This cable car is advertised as the steepest in the world.
Ancient history records Rosh Hanikra as being one of the important trade routes for merchant caravans and often used by armies travelling to and from Lebanon and Syria in the north and Israel, Egypt and Africa in the south. In the Book of Joshua in the Bible, a place called Misraphot Mayim, located south of Rosh HaNikra is mentioned because of it was at the northern border of the Tribe of Asher, part of the Kingdom of Israel. Also historian Josephus Flavius writes that Rosh Hanikra is the northern border of the city of Acre, (from The Jewish War 2, 10, 2). And, in the Jewish book I Maccabees, verse 11:59, it mentions the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom and Shimon HaHashmonai being responsible for this region, in the middle of the 2nd century B.C.E.
Alexander of Macedonea (323 B.C.E.) is purported to have cut a tunnel at Rosh Hanikra so his army could pass through. General used of this roadway include armies of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies during their wars in the third and second century B.C.E. and the Crusaders in 1099 C.E. Then, during World War 1, the British Army made the road safe for motor vehicles.
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