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Writer's pictureMike Levitt

The cosmopolitan life at the Dead Sea Lido


You may have noticed by now, if you are a regular to my blog, that I am something of a fan of Route 90. In a small country which can be traversed by car from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea in less than an hour and a half, and from Mount Hermon in the north to Eilat in the south in six, Route 90 is as close as any road gets to empty, long stretches of desert road conjuring up the classic "road trip."

Route 90 is the longest Israeli road, at about 480 kilometres (300 mi), and stretches from Metula and the northern border with Lebanon, along the western side of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), through the Jordan River Valley, along the western bank of the Dead Sea (making it the world's lowest road), through the Aravah valley, and until Eilat and the southern border with Egypt on the Red Sea. On this occasion, with my son Yonatan, I once again traversed the northern section, from the Dead Sea to the Gilboa, known as Derech Gandi (Gandhi's Road) after the assassinated Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Ze’evi. You can see a map from a previous trip we made here.

We started at the northern tip of the Dead Sea, at the junction of route 90 with route 1: Lido junction, and this blog post is about what we found there. As the name suggested, there was once a lido nearby, within whose remains I had heard there was supposedly a mural worth seeing, and indeed there was!

In the 1920s, Jewish businessmen living in Palestine opened the Montazat al-Lido Restaurant and Hotel as a resort venture. The Dead Sea area was historically an escape from city life, and in the early twentieth century it became easily reachable from Jerusalem, Amman and nearby Jericho. The Lido was at that time much more easily accessed than Ein Gedi or the area of Ein Bokek, where today’s hotels stand, since there was no paved road along the eastern shoreline at that time.

By the 1930s the Lido was also accessible by sea planes, which landed at nearby Kallia Marine Airport. Kibbutz Kallia (or Kalya) was established during the British Mandate era when Moshe Novomeysky, a Jewish engineer from Siberia, won the British government tender for potash mining on the Dead Sea's northern shore. After the marshland surrounding the plant was drained, housing was built to accommodate employees of the Palestine Potash Company, which was chartered in 1929 and employed both Arabs and Jews. The first plant was built to produce potash by solar evaporation of brine from the Sea. The plant was occupied and destroyed by the Jordanian Legion in 1948, but was reestablished by the Israeli government in the 1950s as the Dead Sea Works, at the southern end of the Dead Sea. Today the only salt production at the northern end of the Dead Sea is at the local Arab-owned West Bank Salt Works, which arose from a British-Jordanian potash company in 1964. It produces flavoured salts for the local Arab market and neighboring states.

Incidentally the name "Kallia" has a double significance. It derives from kalium, the Latin name for potassium,but is also a Hebrew acronym for a phrase meaning "the Dead Sea has returned to life" (קם לתחייה ים המוות).

From 1924 to 1939 Imperial Airways provided a commercial long-range service including routes to Africa, India and the Far East by flying boat, and when flights on the England-India route began stopping at the Dead Sea, the Lido resort gained in popularity for its novelty and cosmopolitanism: the hotel and night club catered to a mixed clientele of Jews, Arabs, British Mandate officials and foreign nationals. Imperial Airways was merged into the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) in 1939, and BOAC continued flying boat operations for a few years after the Second World War.

Catering to this diverse crowd, Montazat al-Lido Restaurant (מלון מונטאזת אל לידו) served up an early “fusion” cuisine. Other similar resort hotels were built in the same vicinity, and one such was reviewed in the Perth Western Mail in 1935. Click on the clipping above right (or here) to read the full article, which so well evokes the scene of those cosmopolitan times. Guests could arrive by boat, climbing the stairs from the shore, which almost lapped the building, until the Dead Sea receded.

Panorama in two sections taken from the Palestine Potash factory, 1937 [Matson Photo Service, photographer, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007682808/]

The Britsh Mandate built this police station at Lido Junction to protect Kibbutz Kallia and the Palestine Potash Company plant from Arab terrorists; the employee residences can be seen beyond and to the left of the police station

The offices of the Palestine Potash Company, now collapsing, next to the Lido

A signboard commemorating the story of the Palestine Potash Company, with pictures of the employees' homes and familes

A business man stands at Kallia Marine Airport; the photo is labelled "Jackman's departure fr[om] Dead Sea, Apr. 5, [19]'46" [Matson Photo Service, photographer, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mpc2005009379/PP/]

A cigarette card showing the Imperial Airways Handley Page H.P. 42. Airliner 'HANNO' flying over the Dead Sea in the 1930's, Issued by Lambert & Butler in 1936

Imperial Airways "Empire" Routes Schedule of 1931 [public domain]

To date I have been unable to source contemporary pictures of the Lido resort, but it must have been similar in ambiance to the Kallia Hotel, pictured in the following pictures. The hotel was the first project of architect Zeev Rechter, who later designed Binyanei Ha’Uma in Jerusalem and Heichal HaTarbut in Tel Aviv. The mythical Kallia Hotel was just two kilometres south of the Lido Interchange. Ben Gurion was in the Kalia Hotel on November 29, 1947, when the United Nations decided to partition the British Mandate in Palestine.

Kallia beach and bath house (taken between 1920-1933) [American Colony Photo Dept, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mpc2010000764/PP/]

Dead Sea Kallia Hotel, composite showing Dead Sea (taken between 1934-1939) [American Colony Photo Dept, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mpc2004002746/PP/]

Dead Sea Kallia Hotel. Toscanini on lower terrace (taken between 1934-1939) [American Colony Photo Dept, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mpc2010002705/PP/]

Dead Sea. Kallia Hotel. Hotel lounge looking out toward the south terrace (taken between 1934-1939) [American Colony Photo Dept, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mpc2004002749/PP/]

After the War for Independence in 1948, Montazat al-Lido Restaurant (מלון מונטאזת אל לידו) continued to serve the Jordanian elite but, cut off from half of its clientele, it finally ceased operations. The Jordanian army used the area for army barracks. During the Six Day War in 1967, Israel attacked the army camp. An errant tank shell created the prominent hole in the complex, which may be seen in my pictures below. The Lido became an Israeli army camp, housing reservists who nicknamed it the “Lido Hilton.” In 1973 one of them, Gershon Kochavi, found time whilst stationed there to paint, on the walls of the restaurant dining room, a mural of the whole of Roman Palestine in the style of the Tabula Peutingeriana, an illustrated itinerarium (ancient Roman road map) showing the layout of the cursus publicus, the road network of the Roman Empire, in which Palestine makes up just a small part.

The panoramic photos below show the two sections of Kochavi's rendition, in effect two north-south strips of Palestine, split between the two curving walls of the restaurant. Below these you will find the relevant section of the Tabula Peutingeriana reproduced for comparison.

The western mural maps the Mediterranean strip from the Arava and Beersheva in the south (on the left) to Mount Lebanon in the north (on the far right, adjacent to the compass detail)

The eastern mural maps the Jordan valley strip from the Dead Sea in the south (on the right) to the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and lake Hula in the north (on the left); the shell hole can be seen clearly

Detail of the Tabula Peutingeriana, showing (along the bottom from left to right) Palestine from the Nile Delta to Antiochus (Facsimile edition by Konrad Miller, 1887/1888) [Credit: Konrad Miller (Ulrich Harsch Bibliotheca Augustana), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

Apparently the mural was restored a few years ago by a group of bikers to remove graffiti, in cooperation with the Israel Parks Authority, but the graffiti has returned sadly, and the site is not in good order.

Left: the Dead Sea used to lap the terrace of the restaurant, but has retreated in the ensuing decades, as seen through the shell hole in the mural; Right: the mural is signed in Hebrew with an explanation in English: "This panoramic wall painting has been taken from an old [illegible] map without [attention?] to geographical [accuracy?]"

Below you can see the mural in greater detail, in a video taken in 2015 by Zvi Peretz Cohen.

When Yonatan and I visited, a bride and groom were having their wedding photographs taken in this iconic and unique space, and Yonatan was roped in to "fly" the bride's veil in a photogenic manner, which he succeeded in doing after some practice!

Yonatan assisting the photographer to produce the right effect for the wedding shots

Taking the successful shot (Yonatan has backed out of shot behind the red pillar!)

Probably the most striking aspect of a visit to the Lido is how far the Dead Sea is from the restaurant today. When the nightclub restaurant operated, the Dead Sea lapped the foot of its terrace, with steps that are still visible descending to the water’s edge. Due to the operations of the Dead Sea Works and the extraction of water from the Jordan river before it can reach the Dead Sea, its level has been dropping at an average rate of a meter per year so that, since 1967, the level has dropped over 30 meters, creating many environmental problems, and ruining the beaches and resorts that used to exist at the northern and western shores.

But although rather forlorn and dilapidated, I think this site is worth preserving and has a certain beauty.

Today the Dead Sea is far distant from the restaurant's terrace, which it used to lap against

The restaurant's open semicircular terrace

The remains of the cocktail bar (on which a more recent visitor has left an empty bottle of wine and a glass), and the kitchens beyond

The restaurant terrace now overlooks acres of ground, yet the Dead Sea used to come right up to it

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