Arab palace mistaken for synagogue

Israeli archaeologists have announced that ruins long thought to be of an ancient synagogue actually are the remains of a palace built by Arab caliphs 1,300 years ago.

The site, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, was identified as a synagogue in the 1950s because archaeologists found a carving of a menorah. But scholars said in a report published last week that the identification was an error, and that the site was a winter palace used by the caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty, the same rulers who built Jerusalem’s gold-capped Dome of the Rock. — ap