British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 975

CHAPTER XXV.

Beisan or other point on the Haifa-Damascus railway for the purpose of transporting the products of the Company. Similarly, the Company has the right to construct railways from the Dead Sea northwards to Beisan or southwards to Aqaba, if such railways are not constructed by Government.

The Company has established plant and constructed administrative and living quarters at the north and south ends of the Dead Sea. For the establishment, principally, of evaporation pans the Government of Palestine has from time to time granted leases to the Company, for the period of the concession, covering 9,344 dunums at the north-western end of the Sea; the lease of an additional area of about 5,000 dunums is now under negotiation. An area of 64,199 dunums at the southern end of the Sea in Beersheba sub-district was also leased in May, 1934.

The concession, in so far as it relates to Palestine, was validated by the Dead Sea Concession Ordinance, 1937 in the schedule to which the terms of the concession are reproduced".

The Company have recently put forward proposals for the amendment of certain clauses of the concession, in particular that which concerns the exclusive rights of the Company.

12, The Tiberias Hot Springs Concession. On 15th April, 1912, Dr. Samuel Fakhuri and Amin Abdul Nur obtained a concession from the Council of the Ottoman Vilayet of Beirut for the exploitation of the mineral springs at Tiberias. Owing to circumstances of force majeure the Concession was not put into operation. The rights of the two concessionaires became vested in Suleiman Rey Nassif of Haifa, Joshua Suprashi of Tel Aviv, Bernard Rosenblatt of New York and two others. On 17th April, 1929 by an agreement with the High Commissioner these persons undertook to form within eighteen months a limited liability company having an authorised capital of not less than £50,000, to which the High Commissioner would lease the mineral springs and the land around them for the purpose of the construction of a thermal bath establishment and of laying out gardens, etc. The concessionaires formed a Company entitled the Hamei-Tiberia (Tiberias Hot Springs) Company Ltd. but failed to satisfy the requirements of the agreement with the High Commissioner in regard to the authorised capital. After an extension of the time limit and negotiation
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* Laws of 1937, Vol. I, page 195 and Seton, page 729.

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