Rubbish

"“It will be a place people visit like Bilbao or Stonehenge, an international destination,” said Laura Starr, a New York landscape architect and former design chief for Central Park who has been an adviser on this park from the start.

Hiriya took its name from a neighboring Arab village that was abandoned in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in which Mr. Sharon, then 20, commanded a brigade. Mr. Weyl recalls how he first took Mr. Sharon up the mountain to get his support, and how Mr. Sharon’s face lit up. Surveying the landscape, Mr. Weyl says, Mr. Sharon waxed nostalgic about having “fought here and fought there.”

The site was earmarked as the Tel Aviv area dump in 1952. It grew to monstrous proportions — more than half a mile long and rising more than 87 yards above sea level — until the huge flocks of birds scavenging for food began to endanger the planes flying in and out of the airport.""

I especially like the reference to an Arab village that was "abandoned" by the Arabs and where young Sharon (aka the butcher of Sabra and Chatila) fought. "Abandoned"? Ethnically cleansed villages are "abandoned"? Then again, its the NYT...