The cabinet approved on Sunday the construction of a memorial hall in the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery that would memorialize all the fallen of Israel´s wars in one place.

The memorial, to be designed by the Kimmel Eshkolot architectural firm, will be shaped like a torch that will rise 18 meters high, in which a memorial flame will remain lit at all times.

The name of each fallen soldier will appear on a brick with the date of death, and a memorial candle that will be lit on the anniversary of his or her passing.

"It will be a place where one can commune with the memories of all the fallen, every day of the year," said Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

It will also serve as a venue for state ceremonies and official visits by foreign dignitaries.

The project is to cost NIS 40 million, of which half will be covered by the Defense Ministry, with the rest to be divided among the Prime Minister´s Office, the treasury, the Public Security Ministry, the Strategic Affairs Ministry and the Intelligence and Atomic Energy Ministry.

"We don´t have a central place for commemorating the fallen of Israel´s wars and after decades of talking about it, it was time to make a decision," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Building a memorial containing 23,000 names in one place, while still giving each fallen soldier his or her own space is a challenge, noted the project´s curator, Dr. Orit Shaham-Gover.

"We are in an era when the memory is no longer just ´national.´ Israeli society today believes that each person has a name and this must be given visual expression," she said.

The preliminary concept calls for spiral staircases for visitors within the structure of bricks, each of which has a fallen solder´s name. (© Copyright 2012 Ha´aretz 04/23/12)