01.10.25

Editorial Note

A few days ago, the Iranian regime’s media in Tehran announced that a “group of prominent Israeli and international archaeologists, researchers [and others] has issued a stark open letter condemning the widespread destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza and the West Bank, accusing the Israeli government and military of violating international law and engaging in a policy of ‘annihilation’.” 

According to Iranian media, this letter was signed by “scholars including Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Rafi Greenberg.” The Iranian regime cites the letter, which discusses the “total destruction of a building housing the archaeological storerooms of the prestigious École Biblique in Gaza as a triggering event. The incident necessitated the urgent, partial relocation of tens of thousands of archaeological items, with the full extent of the damage still unknown.”

The Iranians cited the letter as saying, “This is a continuation of the policy of destruction and annihilation in the Gaza Strip that has also targeted heritage sites.” 

The Iranian media added that the letter “broadens its criticism beyond the current conflict in Gaza to address the long-standing situation in the West Bank,” describing the “ongoing Israeli violation of international law in the occupied territories” and constraints on Palestinian archaeological authorities, which have led to the “neglect of many cultural properties, their appropriation by nationalist elements, and their partial or complete destruction.”

The Iranians noted that “the signatories issue a three-point call to action to the Israeli government and military: Immediately stop the demolition of the Gaza Strip, the destruction of its cultural treasures, and the attempt to cleanse it of any presence other than Jewish. Resume adherence to international law, particularly conventions dictating the treatment of cultural heritage during armed conflict and occupation. End the rule of settler gangs and the ongoing annexation of heritage sites in the West Bank and enable Palestinian archaeological enforcement in areas under the Palestinian Authority’s control.” 

The letter, according to the Iranians, concludes “by framing the heritage of the region as a shared responsibility… The heritage of Palestine/the Land of Israel belongs to all the natives of the land [where] Muslims, Christians, and Jews have lived in this land and sustained it for centuries and millennia: It is our duty to maintain the heritage of the land in all its diversity.”

The Iranians ended their announcement by stating that the open letter also “adds a significant voice from the academic and heritage community to the growing international concern over the preservation of cultural history amidst the ongoing conflict.”

It is worth noting that the open letter was initially published by the group “Emek Shaveh” and is titled “Open letter from archaeologists, antiquities researchers, and museum curators against cultural destruction in Gaza and the West Bank.” The letter is signed by Prof. Rafi Greenberg, Dr Tawfiq Da’adli, Dr Dotan Halevy, Dr Chemi Shiff, and Alon Arad.

IAM reported on Greenberg multiple times. He is a longtime political activist masquerading as an academic. Greenberg is the co-founder and one of the directors of “Emek Shaveh,” which was founded in 2008. Emek Shaveh declares it is “working to prevent the politicization of archaeology in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Its latest annual report reveals that in 2024, its budget was NIS 1,184,890, with 98.1 percent of donations coming from overseas. Their donors are FDFA, HEKS, Cordaid, The Royal Norwegian Embassy Tel-Aviv, Irish Foreign Ministry, Oxfam GB, CCFD-Terre Solidaire, Oxfam Novib, European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), EU Peacebuilding Initiative, New Israel Fund, Foundation for Middle East Peace, and Beller Moses Family Foundation.

Emek Shaveh’s “about us” page says, “The archaeological artefact tells a complex story which is independent of religious dictates and traditions. Listening to this story and bringing it to the wider public can enrich our culture and promote values of tolerance and pluralism. We believe that the cultural wealth of this land belongs to the members of all its communities, nations and faiths. An archaeological site is comprised not only of its excavated layers, but also its present-day attributes – the people living in or near it, their culture, their daily lives and their needs.” 

Emek Shaveh also states, “We monitor archaeological activities in these areas including infringement of Palestinian property rights and cultural heritage rights…. We are not interested in proving links between modern ethnic identities (e.g. Israeli, Palestinian, or European) and ancient peoples (e.g. Phoenician, Judean or Crusader). Because archaeology offers an independent view of human and social origins, it is inherently critical of all historical narratives.”

Interestingly, Greenberg was mentioned in a 2021 article, which stated that “Academics critical of Israeli settlement are more blunt. Raphael Greenberg, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University who is publicly opposed to Ariel receiving EU funds, said that the ‘depth of Israeli EU cooperation in things like biomedicine and AI trumps any attempt to hold Israel politically accountable’.”

More recently, Greenberg was mentioned in another article titled “Israel’s Biblical myth is burying the West Bank alive,” which notes that “even within Israeli academic circles, this ideological claim faces serious scrutiny. Renowned Israeli archaeologist Professor Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University harshly criticizes what he calls ‘the weaponization of archaeology’.” Greenberg “notes that the archaeological record in Palestine offers no exclusive evidence of a single group’s historical claim. On the contrary, it reveals a layered tapestry of civilizations and cultures – Canaanite, Roman, Byzantine, Christian, and Islamic – that have succeeded and coexisted on this land.” For Greenberg, “Archaeology in its essence does not provide that kind of certainty and purity that ethnocratic right-wing government ministers might want. So they have to invent it.”

The case of Raphael Greenberg raises a recurring question—one that IAM has often posed—why do Israeli universities, as public institutions, so readily accommodate faculty who engage in overt political activism? Greenberg was hired to teach Bronze Age archaeology and indeed has a solid academic record in that field. Yet, he claims on his Tel Aviv University faculty page, his secondary field of teaching and research is “critical archaeology,” with a particular focus on how Israel has allegedly politicized the discipline to serve national goals. He has argued, for example, that archaeological projects have been deployed to bolster Jewish claims in the West Bank. Unsurprisingly, such positions have earned Greenberg international visibility among those eager to question or deny Israel’s biblical connection to the land.   

On top of this, Greenberg has declared a “work break” at the main entrance to Tel Aviv University, where he protests daily against the killings in Gaza. In a recorded encounter, Greenberg described himself as a non-Zionist and strongly implied that Jews have no historical right to the Land of Israel. He made statements about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 while denying that Jews had the right to create a state.

The leaders of Tel Aviv University should not force the taxpayers to support political activism masquerading as scholarship, in the service of Iran. 

REFERENCES

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/518354/Intl-scholars-urge-action-as-Gaza-West-Bank-archaeological

Intl. scholars urge action as Gaza, West Bank archaeological collections face unprecedented loss

September 27, 2025 – 10:5

TEHRAN – A group of prominent Israeli and international archaeologists, researchers, and museum curators has issued a stark open letter condemning the widespread destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza and the West Bank, accusing the Israeli government and military of violating international law and engaging in a policy of “annihilation.”

The letter, signed by scholars including Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Rafi Greenberg and others, cites the recent total destruction of a building housing the archaeological storerooms of the prestigious École Biblique in Gaza as a triggering event. The incident necessitated the urgent, partial relocation of tens of thousands of archaeological items, with the full extent of the damage still unknown.

“This is a continuation of the policy of destruction and annihilation in the Gaza Strip that has also targeted heritage sites,” the letter states. It references reports indicating that approximately 110 historical buildings, archaeological sites, and other cultural properties have been severely damaged or completely destroyed in Gaza, “mostly with no known connection to military needs.”

The scholars assert that such actions contravene the rules of warfare as set forth in international conventions, including the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which Israel has ratified.

The letter broadens its criticism beyond the current conflict in Gaza to address the long-standing situation in the West Bank. It describes “ongoing Israeli violation of international law in the occupied territories” and constraints on Palestinian archaeological authorities, which have led to the “neglect of many cultural properties, their appropriation by nationalist elements, and their partial or complete destruction.”

In view of what they call the “imminent planned destruction of Gaza city,” the signatories issue a three-point call to action to the Israeli government and military:

Immediately stop the demolition of the Gaza Strip, the destruction of its cultural treasures, and the attempt to cleanse it of any presence other than Jewish.

Resume adherence to international law, particularly conventions dictating the treatment of cultural heritage during armed conflict and occupation.

End the rule of settler gangs and the ongoing annexation of heritage sites in the West Bank and enable Palestinian archaeological enforcement in areas under the Palestinian Authority’s control.

The letter concludes by framing the heritage of the region as a shared responsibility, stating, “The heritage of Palestine/the Land of Israel belongs to all the natives of the land… Muslims, Christians, and Jews have lived in this land and sustained it for centuries and millennia: It is our duty to maintain the heritage of the land in all its diversity.”   The open letter adds a significant voice from the academic and heritage community to the growing international concern over the preservation of cultural history amidst the ongoing conflict.

AM

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גילוי דעת בנוגע להשמדה תרבותית (3 שפות)

גילוי דעת בנוגע להשמדה תרבותית (3 שפות)

19 בספטמבר, 2025

מאז תחילת המלחמה עמק שווה פועלת לעקוב ולתעד את ההרס של נכסי התרבות בעזה. לאור המתקפה המתגברת על העיר עזה, ביקשנו לפרסם את גילוי דעת זה. אנו מזמינים את כל מי שמעוניין או מעוניינת להצטרף לגילוי הדעת לפנות אלינו.

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מכתב פתוח של ארכיאולוגים, חוקרי עתיקות ואוצרי מוזיאונים נגד ההשמדה התרבותית בעזה ובגדה המערבית

בימים אלה נתבשרנו על פיצוץ בניין שבו שכן מחסן הממצאים הארכיאולוגיים של מכון המקרא הצרפתי בעזה, פעולה אשר חייבה פינוי בהול וחלקי של עשרות אלפי פריטים, תוך גרימת נזק שהיקפו אינו ידוע. זהו המשך למסכת פעולות הרס והשמדה ברצועת עזה המופנית גם אל אתרי מורשת (על פי הדיווח האחרון, כ-110 מבנים היסטוריים, אתרי עתיקות ונכסי תרבות אחרים נפגעו קשות או נהרסו כליל), לרוב ללא שום קשר ידוע לצרכים צבאיים.

פעולה זו, הנוגדת את דיני המלחמה כפי שנוסחו באמנות בינלאומיות, מצטרפת להפרה הישראלית המתמשכת של החוק הבינלאומי בשטחים הכבושים (יהודה ושומרון) ולהצרת צעדיהם של גורמי אכיפה ארכיאולוגיים פלסטיניים בשטחי הרשות (שטחי A, B). אלה מביאים להפקרת נכסי תרבות רבים, ניכוסם על ידי גורמים לאומניים ולהריסתם החלקית או המלאה.

לנוכח ההכנות להחרבת העיר עזה כולה והפגיעה באתרי מורשת בעלי חשיבות מקומית ועולמית ברחבי הרצועה, המהווים המשך לעשורים של השמדה והפקרה של מורשת תרבותית פלסטינית בתוך מדינת ישראל ובגדה המערבית, אנו, אנשי מקצוע בתחומי מורשת, קוראים לממשלת ישראל והצבא:

• להפסיק לאלתר את ההשמדה של רצועת עזה, על אוצרות התרבות שבה, ואת הניסיון לטהרה מכל נוכחות פרט ליהודית.
• לשוב ולקיים את כללי החוק הבינלאומי, ובפרט את אלה הקובעים את היחס הנאות למורשת תרבותית בזמן מלחמה ובשטחים הנתונים לאחיזה צבאית – אמנות שאושרו על ידי מדינת ישראל.
• לשים קץ לשלטון כנופיות המתנחלים ולתהליך הסיפוח של אתרי מורשת בגדה המערבית, ולאפשר אכיפה ארכיאולוגית פלסטינית בשטחים שבשליטת הרשות.

המורשת של פלסטין/ארץ ישראל משותפת לכל ילידי הארץ, כמו גם לכל מי שקבעו בה את ביתם ורואים בה את עתידם. מוסלמים, נוצרים ויהודים חיו בארץ והחיו אותה במשך מאות ואלפי שנים; חובתנו להגן על מורשת הארץ על כל גווניה, למען עתידנו ועתיד צאצאינו.

על החתום,

פרופ׳ רפי גרינברג
ד״ר תאופיק דעדללה
ד״ר דותן הלוי
ד״ר חמי שיף
אלון ארד

Open letter from archaeologists, antiquities researchers, and museum curators against cultural destruction in Gaza and the West Bank

In recent days we have learnt of the total destruction of a building housing the archaeological store-rooms of the École Biblique in Gaza, an act that necessitated the urgent and apparently partial relocation of tens of thousands of items, causing damage whose extent is still unknown. This is a continuation of the policy of destruction and annihilation in the Gaza Strip that has also targeted heritage sites (according to the latest reports, about 110 historical buildings, archaeological sites, and other cultural properties have been severely damaged or completely destroyed), mostly with no known connection to military needs.

Such actions, which contravene the rules of warfare as set forth in international conventions, add to the ongoing Israeli violation of international law in the occupied territories (Judea and Samaria), and to the constraint on the activities of Palestinian archaeological authorities in areas under the Palestinian Authority’s control (Areas A and B). These circumstances have resulted in the neglect of many cultural properties, their appropriation by nationalist elements, and their partial or complete destruction.

In view of the imminent planned destruction of Gaza city and the damage to heritage sites of local and global significance throughout the Gaza Strip, which continues decades of destruction and neglect of Palestinian cultural heritage within the State of Israel and the West Bank, we, professionals in the fields of heritage, call upon the Government of Israel and the military to:

– Immediately stop the demolition of the Gaza Strip, the destruction of its cultural treasures, and the attempt to cleanse it of any presence other than Jewish.

– Resume adherence to international law, particularly those conventions that dictate the proper treatment of cultural heritage during armed conflicts and occupation —treaties that have been ratified by the State of Israel.

– End the rule of settler gangs and the ongoing annexation of heritage sites in the West Bank and enable Palestinian archaeological enforcement in areas under the Palestinian Authority’s control.

The heritage of Palestine/the Land of Israel belongs to all the natives of the land, as well as to all who have made it their home and have a stake in its future. Muslims, Christians, and Jews have lived in this land and sustained it for centuries and millennia: It is our duty to maintain the heritage of the land in all its diversity, for the sake of our future and that of our descendants.

Singed

Prof. Rafi Greenberg
Dr Tawfiq Da’adli
Dr Dotan Halevy
Dr Chemi Shiff
Alon Arad

رسالة مفتوحة من علماء الآثار وباحثي الآثار وأمناء المتاحف ضد التدمير الثقافي في غزة والضفة الغربية

شهدنا مؤخرا انفجار برج سكني يضم مستودع المقتنيات الأثرية التابع للمعهد الفرنسي التوراتي في غزة، وهو ما استدعى إخلاء عشرات الآلاف من المحتويات بشكل طارئ وجزئي، مسبباً أضراراً لا يزال حجمها مجهولاً. ويُعدّ هذا التفجير استمراراً لسياسة التدمير والإبادة في قطاع غزة التي استهدفت أيضاً مواقع تراثية (وفقاً لأحدث التقارير، تضرر حوالي 110 مبانٍ تاريخية ومواقع أثرية وغيرها من مركبات الإرث الثقافي بشكل بالغ أو دُمرت بالكامل)، ومعظمها لا علاقة له بالحجج العسكرية.

هذه الأعمال، التي تخالف قواعد الحرب المنصوص عليها في الاتفاقيات الدولية، تُضاف إلى الانتهاكات الإسرائيلية المستمرة للقانون الدولي في الأراضي المحتلة (الضفة الغربية)، وتُعيق أنشطة السلطات الأثرية الفلسطينية في المناطق الخاضعة لسيطرة السلطة الفلسطينية (المنطقتان أ و ب). أدت هذه الظروف إلى إهمال العديد من المواقع الثقافية، واستيلاء عناصر قومية عليها، وتدميرها جزئيًا أو كليًا.

في ضوء التدمير المخطط له لمدينة غزة، والضرر الذي يلحق بالمواقع التراثية ذات الأهمية المحلية والعالمية في جميع أنحاء قطاع غزة، والذي يستمر لعقود من تدمير وإهمال التراث الثقافي الفلسطيني داخل دولة إسرائيل والضفة الغربية، ندعو نحن، المختصون في مجالات التراث، حكومة إسرائيل وجيش الدفاع الإسرائيلي إلى:

• التوقف فورًا عن هدم قطاع غزة، وتدمير كنوزه الثقافية، ومحاولة تطهيره من أي وجود غير يهودي.
• استئناف الالتزام بالقانون الدولي، وخاصةً الاتفاقيات التي تُملي المعاملة السليمة للتراث الثقافي أثناء الحرب – وهي المعاهدات التي صادقت عليها دولة إسرائيل.
• إنهاء حكم عصابات المستوطنين والضم الفعلي المستمر للمواقع التراثية في الضفة الغربية، وتمكين إنقاذ التراث الأثري الفلسطيني في المناطق الخاضعة لسيطرة السلطة الفلسطينية.

إن ارث فلسطين/ إسرائيل ملكٌ لجميع سكانها الأصليين، ولكل من اتخذها وطنًا له، وله نصيبٌ في مستقبلها. لقد عاش المسلمون والمسيحيون واليهود على هذه الأرض وحافظوا عليها لقرونٍ وآلاف السنين، ومن واجبنا الحفاظ على ارث هذا الوطن باختلاف الوانه من أجل مستقبلنا ومستقبل ذريتنا.

البروفيسور رافي خرينبرخ
الدكتور توفيق دعادله
الدكتور دوتان هليفي
الدكتور حمي شيف
الون اراد

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https://thecradle.co/articles-id/33222

Israel’s Biblical myth is burying the West Bank alive

With full western backing, Tel Aviv is entrenching a one-state apartheid system and extinguishing any prospect of Palestinian sovereignty. 

A Cradle Correspondent

SEP 18, 2025

A recent statement from the US ambassador to Tel Aviv laid bare Washington’s deep ideological alignment with Israel’s colonial project. 

Mike Huckabee dismissed the term “West Bank” as “imprecise” and “modern,” insisting the territory should be called “Judea and Samaria” – biblical names used in Israel’s foundational mythology. He further declared Jerusalem to be “the undisputed and indivisible capital of the Jewish state.”

How ‘Judea and Samaria’ became state doctrine

Such remarks are part of a wider strategy adopted by Israel and its western allies to impose new facts on the ground, legitimized through religious and historical narratives to justify the gradual annexation of the occupied West Bank. For years, Tel Aviv has pursued an aggressive expansionist policy built on illegal settlement construction, creeping annexation, and the erasure of the Palestinian land’s geographic and political identity. Most recently, Israeli authorities approved a new settlement project in the heart of Hebron (Al-Khalil), consisting of hundreds of housing units next to the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is now mostly a synagogue under Israeli control. 

Israel’s strategy in the occupied West Bank is a complex, multi-layered one that far exceeds the parameters of temporary military administration. It is a long-term blueprint for de facto annexation – what could be termed “creeping annexation.” Through legal warfare, archaeology, settlement expansion, and political engineering, Tel Aviv is redrawing the region’s geography and demography to erase any possibility of Palestinian sovereignty. The aim is to impose irreversible facts on the ground and absorb the territory into the so-called “Biblical Land of Israel” – a supremacist strategy that works toward dismembering the Palestinian national project and the consolidation of permanent Jewish-Israeli control. 

At the heart of Israel’s colonization strategy lies the foundational myth that “Judea and Samaria” are the ancient birthright of the Jewish people. This religious-nationalist narrative, central to the Zionist project and championed by settler and far-right factions, is the ideological engine driving Israel’s land theft. In this warped worldview, the seizure of Palestinian territory is seen as a righteous reclamation rather than an occupation, justified as a divinely sanctioned ‘return’ that cloaks a settler-colonial enterprise in biblical language and fabricated heritage.

However, even within Israeli academic circles, this ideological claim faces serious scrutiny. Renowned Israeli archaeologist Professor Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University harshly criticizes what he calls “the weaponization of archaeology.” He notes that the archaeological record in Palestine offers no exclusive evidence of a single group’s historical claim. 

On the contrary, it reveals a layered tapestry of civilizations and cultures – Canaanite, Roman, Byzantine, Christian, and Islamic – that have succeeded and coexisted on this land. Greenberg affirms that “Archaeology in its essence does not provide that kind of certainty and purity that ethnocratic right-wing government ministers might want. So they have to invent it.” According to him, the idea of a homogenous culture during any historical period is pure fabrication.

This contradiction exposes the real function of the biblical narrative – an excuse to legitimize a political settlement project. It transforms the conflict from a political struggle over land and resources into an existential battle waged through mythology, history, and memory, allowing Palestinians to be depicted as outsiders with no historical connection or national rights to the land.

The evolution of Israeli control

Israel’s strategy toward the occupied West Bank has evolved through distinct phases in response to political and security developments on the ground. 

From 1948 until the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, Israeli policy shifted from cautious observation to direct control, and later to attempts to create a new political reality that secures its long-term security and demographic interests. This trajectory can be broken down into key stages, each with its own strategy and tools.

Following the Nakba in 1948 and the subsequent partition of Palestine, the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem came under Jordanian control. During this period, Israeli strategy toward the area was primarily defensive, driven by security anxieties. Israel viewed the occupied West Bank as a potential launchpad for attacks from the east, and the narrow coastal strip separating the occupied West Bank from the Mediterranean Sea, Israel’s so-called “narrow waist,” was seen as a major strategic vulnerability.

The 1967 war marked a dramatic turning point. With the “Naksa” (Setback), which saw the occupation of the West Bank, Israel suddenly found itself ruling over one million Palestinians, posing a fundamental dilemma regarding how to control the land without fully absorbing its population into the Jewish state while maintaining security.

The architect of Israeli policy at the time was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who developed a dual strategy known as the “open bridges policy.” This approach aimed for limited intervention or invisible occupation where possible.

Israel allowed the continued movement of people and goods across the Jordan River via the Allenby and Damia bridges. The goal was to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian economy, avoid assuming the burden of managing daily life, and allow Palestinians to maintain familial, social, and economic ties with the Arab world via Jordan. The aim was to normalize life under occupation while quietly encouraging “voluntary” Palestinian emigration as a long-term demographic solution. Parallel to this, a cautious settlement project began, initially focusing on areas of strategic security interest, such as the Jordan Valley and the Jerusalem perimeter, in line with the “Allon Plan,” which called for annexing these regions while returning densely populated areas to Jordan under a future settlement.

^{Map of the proposed Israeli annexation plan in the occupied West Bank (“Allon Plan”).}

With the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Arab League’s recognition of it in 1974 as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, Israel grew increasingly anxious. Its attempts to work with traditional municipal leaders, elected in the 1976 local elections and largely affiliated with the PLO, had failed. In response, the Israeli Likud government under Menachem Begin in the late 1970s adopted a new strategy – the creation of “Village Leagues.” These were local administrative bodies composed of tribal and rural Palestinian figures. 

The Palestinian leaders were selected, armed, and supported by Israel’s civil administration to serve as an alternative “moderate” leadership willing to cooperate with Tel Aviv. The idea was to bypass the PLO and its urban nationalist leadership and to promote a limited “self-rule” model proposed under the Camp David Accords, which granted Palestinians civil administrative control while security and land remained under Israeli authority. However, the Village Leagues experiment failed miserably. Most Palestinians saw their members as collaborators and traitors, and the bodies lacked any popular legitimacy before collapsing entirely with the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987.

The collapse of this strategy, combined with international shifts such as the end of the Cold War and the First Persian Gulf War, pushed both Israeli and Palestinian actors toward secret negotiations in Oslo. The Oslo Accords, signed between 1993 and 1995, marked the culmination of this phase and reflected Israel’s new strategy of separation and redeployment. Rather than exercising direct control over every inch of land and every aspect of Palestinian life, Israel sought to offload the burden of managing Palestinian population centers while retaining comprehensive control over security, borders, settlements, and resources.

Lawfare and bulldozers

The occupied West Bank was divided administratively and security-wise into three zones. 

Area A, about 18 percent of the West Bank and encompassing major cities, was placed under full Palestinian civil and security control. 

Area B, around 21 percent and covering towns and villages surrounding the cities, came under Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security oversight, though Israel retained ultimate authority. 

Area C, more than 60 percent of the West Bank, included Israeli settlements, border zones such as the Jordan Valley, bypass roads, most agricultural lands, and water resources. This area remained under full Israeli civil and security control.

The Oslo Accords created a new reality. Israel’s focus shifted from managing Palestinian population centers to cementing permanent control over vast swathes of land, especially Area C. To achieve this, Israel began using more legal and scientific means to impose its will and Judaize the territory. Perhaps the most alarming development is Israel’s use of legal instruments to formally extend its sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. This is exemplified by the proposed amendment to the 1978 Antiquities Law introducedby Likud Knesset member Amit Halevi. 

The amendment seeks to extend the jurisdiction of the Israel Antiquities Authority to Area C. Though framed as a technical measure, it is a blatant step toward formal annexation and the imposition of Israeli civil law over occupied land, in direct violation of international law, which limits occupying powers to preserving heritage for the benefit of local populations. Israel promotes this law under the pretext of protecting Jewish heritage from alleged systematic destruction, creating a false sense of archaeological emergency. But on the ground, this law becomes a powerful tool for land seizure. 

Once a site is declared archaeological, military protection is imposed, barring Palestinians from accessing or using the land, halting development, and forcibly displacing residents, paving the way for land and property confiscation.

This approach is a replica of the Elad model used in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem, where the Elad settler organization combined house takeovers with archaeological excavations to erase Palestinian presence. This model is now being exported deep into the occupied West Bank, as in the case of Sebastia, north of Nablus, where excavations aim to sever the site from its Palestinian town and convert it into an Israeli national park.

Crushing the alternative: Why the Palestinian Authority was never meant to govern

Land control is incomplete without control, or more precisely, removal, of its population. Israel uses a multi-layered pressure strategy to force Palestinians, especially in Area C, to leave. 

In recent months, Israeli military raids have intensified on Palestinian villages, towns, and refugee camps, particularly in the northern occupied West Bank triangle, accompanied by a wide-scale destruction of infrastructure. At the same time, settlers have been unleashed to wreak havoc in Palestinian villages and towns, often under Israeli army protection. This creates a climate of terror designed to make Palestinian life unbearable, and has already led to the displacement of thousands.

The annexation strategy is completed by systematically weakening any unified Palestinian political leadership capable of representing the national project. Israel works to disable the Palestinian Authority (PA) without allowing its total collapse, to avoid having to administer the population directly. This is done by withholding tax revenues to financially cripple the PA, obstructing the movement of its officials, and undermining any semblance of sovereignty, consequently reducing the PA to a subcontractor for security and administrative coordination in isolated Palestinian pockets, devoid of real political authority or territorial control.

In its bid to bypass and dismantle unified Palestinian representation, Israel is revisiting its old strategy of creating local proxy leadership. This includes direct dealings with traditional structures like clan leaders, village councils, and tribal elders, aimed at establishing independent bodies subordinate to the occupation. Reminiscent of the failed Village Leagues project of the 1980s, the goal is to fragment Palestinian society and establish local partners through whom the population can be managed without engaging with a national leadership. Recent proposals, such as the Hebron Emirate or plans to impose warlord-led administrations on Gaza post-war, are experiments in this direction. Israel frames these policies in the occupied West Bank as a series of reactive security measures, when in fact they are they are interlocking components of a deliberate, long-term strategy of creeping annexation. 

By weaponizing the law, archaeology, settlements, demographic pressure, political suppression, and social fragmentation, Israel is systematically dismantling the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, at a time of growing momentum for international recognition. The outcome is a one-state reality between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, one not founded on equality or citizenship but on an entrenched system of domination by one group over another. A reality that numerous analysts and human rights organizations, including Israeli ones, have described as apartheid. The near future promises deeper entrenchment of this tragic status quo, rendering the so-called two-state solution practically unworkable amid relentless settlement expansion, land fragmentation, and the transformation of the occupied West Bank into isolated cantons stripped of any semblance of sovereignty. 

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https://www.972mag.com/israel-archaeology-annexation-rafi-greenberg/

‘It comes with the territory’: How Israel’s archaeologists legitimize annexation

Weaponizing antiquities is part of Israel’s colonial legacy, says Rafi Greenberg, whose colleagues have largely remained silent about Gaza’s destruction.

ByDikla Taylor-Sheinman July 1, 2025

Rafi Greenberg, Tel Aviv, June 2024. (Oren Ziv)

On April 2, the Israel Exploration Society abruptly canceled what would have been the country’s largest and most prestigious annual gathering of archaeologists. The Archaeological Congress, an annual fixture for nearly 50 years, was called off by its organizers following pressure from far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu to exclude Tel Aviv University professor Raphael (Rafi) Greenberg. “I will not let the wild weeds of academia who are working to promote boycotts of their fellow archaeologists spit into the well of the heritage from which the people of Israel drink,” the minister wrote on X. 

In the eyes of Eliyahu and the right-wing NGOs who agitated for Greenberg’s ousting, the professor’s most immediate offense was an open letter he penned a month prior. There, he had urged Israeli and international colleagues to boycott the “First International Conference on Archaeology and Site Conservation of Judea and Samaria” at the luxury Dan Jerusalem Hotel in the city’s eastern half — the first of its kind held in internationally-recognized occupied territory. 

Though the Archaeological Congress ultimately took place online last week with Greenberg’s participation, the controversies surrounding both conferences raise deeper moral and political questions about the role of Israel’s archaeology community, as Israel deepens its assault on Palestinian cultural heritage and religious sites in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and the government moves toward annexing the West Bank — in part through the weaponization of archaeology itself. 

In May, Israel’s Heritage Ministry officially commenced the excavation of Sebastia, north of Nablus in the West Bank, with plans to turn the site into the “Shomron national park” — severing the acropolis and ancient village from the Palestinian town to which it is connected.

But the more consequential development began in July 2024, when MK Amit Halevi from Netanyahu’s Likud party advanced a legislative amendment that seeks to apply Israeli antiquities laws to the West Bank. Specifically, the proposed legislation would extend the jurisdiction of Israel’s Antiquity Authority (IAA) from Israel proper to Area C of the West Bank — around 60 percent of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory.

The bill represents the culmination of a five-year campaign by settler regional councils and far-right groups to portray Palestinians as an existential threat to so-called “national” (i.e. Jewish) heritage sites in the West Bank. The left-wing Israeli NGO Emek Shaveh called the legislation an “experiment at achieving annexation through antiquities.”

Graffiti spray-painted by extremist Jews, in the ancient archaeological site of Sebastia, near the West Bank city of Nablus, May 12, 2025. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)

The IAA’s resistance to extending its reach into the West Bank may have slowed momentum, but it hasn’t derailed the larger goal. In what appears to be a strategic pivot, lawmakers in recent committee meetings proposed forming a new body under the Heritage Ministry to manage activities across the West Bank, not just in Area C. This move skirts the controversy while still aiming at the same outcome: imposing Israeli civilian law over West Bank antiquities. 

Indeed, the workaround has faced considerably less blowback from the archaeological establishment. With the exception of Emek Shaveh, cofounded by Greenberg, resistance within the archaeology community to the proposed legislation has largely centered on its implications for Israeli archaeology and Israel’s international reputation. 

+972 Magazine sat down with Greenberg to discuss what this latest legislation would mean for Palestinians in the West Bank — which some of the most public opposition entirely failed to mention — who are already suffering from unprecedented levels of state-backed settler violence. Among other things, we explored the fraught relationship between Israeli archaeologists and Palestinians, the “politicization” of Israeli archaeology, liberal appeals to academic freedom, and why Israeli archaeology has little to say about the destruction of Gaza. 

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start, do you view the postponement of the Archaeological Congress in April, after the heritage minister agitated to block your participation, as a positive development or a negative one?

I have had a complicated relationship with the archaeological community for decades because I’ve been very critical of what I call the colonial heritage of Israeli archaeology. But this conference was organized by a younger set of archaeologists. It was actually a chance to talk — at least for a few minutes — about some sensitive issues in a fully archaeological setting. 

I was going to talk about what [Greek archaeologist and Brown University professor] Yanis Hamilakis and I call the “archaeologization” of Greece and Israel. These are two countries that have been valued by the West since the 18th and 19th centuries almost entirely for their past. And historically, this caused the West, and later the Zionist movement, to undervalue whoever was living in the country — who supposedly had no proper understanding of the past.

Palestinians gather around a winepress in Ain Karem, January 1, 1920. (Library of Congress)

My claim in the paper I was going to read at the conference was that archaeology has played a role in this [dehumanization of Palestinians] and it began not with Israeli archaeology but with proper colonial archaeology of the 19th century — British, German, French archaeology. Israelis then inherited that [legacy], and as a settler colony, it was convenient to continue to hold that point of view.

This sort of primitive approach to archaeology is the one that animates the settler groups and people like Israel’s Heritage Minister. [In their view], only people who connect to specific antiquities from specific times and specific cultures have a right to the country, whereas the rest have no right to the land, to its antiquities, to anything.

So, on the one hand, I was pleasantly surprised that my paper was accepted; this was a chance to present it to the archaeological community, which by and large does not want to talk about this issue. And at the same time, it set up this clash between the conference organizers and the right-wing agitators, who had me on their blacklist for a long time.

But the context of the clash between the Heritage Minister and conference organizers was such that it reverberated with a broader struggle in Israel between so-called pro-democratic forces and the so-called authoritarian or ethnocratic forces in Israel. And a very significant plurality of archaeologists belong to the liberal democratic camp, so for them, the conference became an issue about academic freedom and freedom of expression.

For that reason, it was easy for most of my archaeology colleagues [and the conference organizers] to take my side. Or — as one of my former students wrote to me on WhatsApp — “they insist on having the right not to listen to you, to be able to make the choice to ignore you.” They were not going to let the heritage minister make that choice for them. 

While the session in which I ultimately presented last week was well-attended, with over 120 participants, it was a brief 15 minute interlude in what was otherwise an insulated bubble. There were about 12 papers read on West Bank and East Jerusalem excavations by Tel Aviv University and other researchers or by scholars from Ariel University [in the West Bank settlement of Ariel] — papers that would be excluded from most international venues. An Ariel University scholar was disinvited from the World Archaeological Conference during the same week.

Palestinian girls and their father visit and pose by antiquities vandalized by settlers in Zanuta, a South Hebron Hills village where such sites have been used as a pretext to evict residents, March 9, 2024. (Omri Eran-Vardi)

In their arguments for expanding the IAAs jurisdiction to the West Bank, the right-wing settler NGOs allege that Palestinians in the West Bank not only have no idea how to take care of the antiquities in their midst but are actively destroying them, vandalizing them, and stealing them. Can you discuss the legislative moves being taken right now in the Knesset to expand the IAA’s jurisdiction? How does it relate to annexation?

The trope that you mentioned of the local people not taking care of antiquities or destroying antiquities is as old as archaeology itself. And then here in Israel, you have that extra layer of what the settler colonialists see as a divine and historic right to the land.

But the actual move itself to broaden the IAA’s jurisdiction to the West Bank is very much a political move, because the settlers don’t have a true interest in archaeology. In fact, Zionism was quite slow to adopt archaeology in Israel as a vehicle of [establishing a Jewish connection to the land] because the [Jewish] antiquities here in Israel are not too impressive or obvious, and there are only a handful of them. 

It’s not like Greek temples that, as my colleague Yanis Hamilakis says, are like skeletons all over Greece; you can see and point out white marble and columns everywhere. In Israel, most of the antiquities that you see are probably not Jewish. If you walk through the countryside and see a ruined building or a castle, it’s likely to be Islamic, Christian or something else. 

So archaeology doesn’t give settlers a very obvious point of attachment to the landscape. And yet the settlers claim that all of the West Bank, beneath the surface, is fundamental to Jewish history — that it is where the Bible was written. 

When I was actually engaged in cataloging all the known, surveyed, and excavated antiquities sites in the West Bank and subsequently tried to translate that into a map of heritage points, only a tiny minority of sites could really be ascribed with little doubt to a specific ethnic or religious group. Most sites are eclectic; they have stuff predating Judaism by thousands of years. They have stuff after the times of Jewish independence in [ancient] Palestine, from different Islamic dynasties and Christian control. 

Settlers, under the protection of Israeli security forces, hold a Tisha B’av prayer service in the middle of a private garden which they claim is an ancient synagogue, in the Palestinian village of Al-Tuwani, South Hebron Hills, August 7, 2022. (Omri Eran-Vardi)

If you take any slice of the history of Israel-Palestine, at any point in time, you will not find a single homogenous culture across the landscape. There’s no time in which everyone in this country was Jewish, Islamic, Christian or anything else. Archaeology in its essence does not provide that kind of certainty and purity that ethnocratic right-wing government ministers might want. So they have to invent it. And then they say the Palestinians are damaging that [exclusively Jewish heritage] and then we will use this as a way of grabbing more land. 

So [the settlers] have this very instrumental view of what archaeology can give them. It’s not about antiquities at all — it is about effectively using antiquities as another way of acquiring real estate.  At Emek Shaveh, we call it the weaponization of archaeology, or the “Elad model,” after what happened in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. There, Jewish settlers not only acquired [Palestinian] homes but large tracts of empty archaeological space. And by connecting the houses they acquired with the archaeological space, they’ve come to control all of Silwan, or at least the Wadi Hilweh neighborhood. The Elad model is what the settlers are trying to imprint in the West Bank.

It sounds like archaeology is being instrumentalized in much the same way that firing zones, nature reserves, and declarations of state land have been weaponized against Palestinians in the West Bank in the decades following the 1967 War and Israel’s ensuing occupation of the West Bank.

Exactly.

Emek Sheveh frames these legislative moves as another step toward annexation of the West Bank. To push back on this a bit, hasn’t Israel de facto annexed the West Bank already? The archaeological sites in the West Bank today are under the purview of the Civil Administration (a branch of the Israeli military), so there is already an Israeli body that’s dealing with antiquities in the West Bank. And the IAA, which is supposed to only operate in Israel proper, has itself waded into the West Bank. Is this legislative push mostly symbolic? How does it represent a material change from the status quo?

The way things have functioned up until now — that Israel’s Civil Administration has its own archaeological set up in Area C of the West Bank, separate from Israel — has been super convenient for my [liberal] Israeli academic friends.  All Israeli archaeological work in the occupied West Bank is done under a legal framework that has occasionally received the stamp of approval from the Israeli High Court, saying Israel’s occupation is a temporary situation and the Civil Administration is in place just to further the interests of people living in that territory until a final status agreement is reached. So scholars from Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, can maintain that their work in the West Bank is legal because it is compliant with the constraints that Israel’s Civil Administration has put upon them. 

Now, this initiative to hand over the West Bank to the IAA is blowing their cover. The Israel Antiquities Authority is basically annexing the antiquities of the West Bank to Israel, and then Israeli law will apply at those sites and then anything that you do [in the West Bank], you will basically be recognizing this annexationist law. That puts the academics and the IAA in a very uncomfortable situation.

Nir Hasson wrote in Haaretz that the current bill to extend the jurisdiction of the IAA “officially turns Israeli archaeology into a pickaxe with which to dig for the sake of furthering apartheid.” You’ve written extensively about Israeli archaeology in the West Bank since 1967. How did Israeli archaeology relate to this occupied territory before the last few decades?

I think that this [view of Israeli archaeology] actually belongs to the colonial underpinnings of Zionism, and of Israel itself. One of the things taken for granted in this colonial worldview is [its notion that], “if we love antiquities, and all we want to do is uncover the past 3,000 years or 10,000 years, then why shouldn’t we be allowed to do that? We represent science, culture, progress.”

I insist on saying this because [during the 18th and 19th centuries,] the incoming scholars or excavators were equally contemptuous of Muslim, Christian, or Jewish inhabitants that they encountered here, representatives of a past that had to be overcome by science. [For them,] excavating the antiquities [was simply] the right thing to do — everywhere. 

Workers at the City of David archaeological site, near Jerusalem’s Old City, on July 22, 2019. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

I want to emphasize that [Palestinian dispossession at the hands of Israeli archaeology] is too often presented as Israeli archaeologists excavating Jewish stuff to support Jewish appropriation of land. But it is deeper than that; any work that we do, whether on a Bronze age or neolithic era site, is considered good because we are doing it for the sake of science. 

The recent legislation is embarrassing to those who subscribe to this view because now suddenly archaeology is being “politicized,” as if up until now it was not political. I’ve increasingly tried to demonstrate to my colleagues, and in general, that this entitled, supposedly apolitical stance is political. It’s not that you wake up thinking, how am I going to instrumentalize archaeology to take over this hilltop or this valley? It’s more like: if the border with Syria is now opened up and there’s a wonderful early Bronze Age site to be excavated, then the archaeologist is just going over the border on the weekend to see the antiquities near Quneitra. I’m speaking hypothetically, but I would not be surprised if it has happened already.

In Hebrew you say, po’al yotseh — “it comes with the territory.” That’s what happens: when Israel occupies some place, archaeologists will soon follow, sometimes within days.

So it seems like what we’re seeing now is a very brazen kind of settler strategy for acquiring more territory in the West Bank.

Yes — if you zoom in to the Jordan Valley, for example, you will find archaeology implicated there. Now again, those archaeologists, they’re just there to do science. It just is convenient that the science is right next to a settler outpost. So it becomes part of the enclosure [of Palestinian land]— of surrounding these Palestinian shepherds and small villages with things that represent the Israeli authorities.

There are some staked-out archaeological sites in the Jordan Valley, and I’m sure that if you ask the excavator, they’ll say, “Oh, this site was surveyed 20 years ago, and they picked up some Iron Age pottery. This is exactly what I’m interested in. And I happen to be from Ariel University [located in the occupied West Bank], but we’re not political, we’re just investigating antiquities.”

At some point, I can understand that my colleague at Tel Aviv University who studies the Roman period and doesn’t read social or political theory might not understand the role of his everyday Roman archaeology in colonialism, but can a person teaching at Ariel University and excavating in the West Bank misunderstand their role? I think you have to be willfully ignorant. 

Chancellor of the Ariel University Center of Samaria Yigal Cohen Orgad (L) and Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz seen at a cornerstone ceremony for the new Faculty of Science, January 15, 2013. (Gideon Markowicz/Flas90)

Given that the colonial element of Israeli archaeology predates its occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, can you speak a little bit about archaeology inside of Israel proper and how Israeli archaeologists have engaged with Palestinian history from the last few hundred years?

Hebrew University in Jerusalem had a monopoly on archaeology until 1967. At this point, there was an established curriculum which divided archaeology into prehistoric, biblical, and classical archaeology. All Israeli archaeologists accepted and studied within this framework, and when the new research universities were established in the 1970s, they adopted the same basic curriculum, which brings you up to more or less the Byzantine Age. Any student could choose two specializations, one of which had to be the biblical period. 

This meant that biblical archaeology was the raison d’être of Israeli archaeology. There was no Islamic archaeology; at Hebrew University, there was [only] a small cottage industry in Islamic art. 

This focus on biblical archaeology — biblical tales, sites mentioned in the bible, and biblical geography — renders the present and past few hundred years unimportant. Up until 30 to 40 years ago, this meant that when excavations were undertaken at ancient sites, you either went quickly through the uppermost layers, or sometimes you just removed them entirely without documentation. That’s no longer considered good practice.

I always understood this [omission of recent history from the archaeological record] in a theoretical way, but in two projects that I was recently engaged in, I came to a much more tactile understanding of what that means. The first was a project I worked on with Hebrew University art historian and archaeologist Tawfiq Da’adli at Beit Yerach, or Asinabra [near the Sea of Galillee]. The site had been excavated and repeatedly misidentified  as Roman or Jewish, but Tawfiq and I managed to re-identify it as an Umayyad palace from the 7th–8th centuries CE. Only the foundations of the palace had been preserved, so there were objective barriers to understanding what the site was. 

Hebrew University archaeologist and art historian Tawfiq Da’adli gives a tour of Palestinian Arab Ramla, a historic city located in Israel between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Al-Taji House, one of the few surviving homes in the Al-Mufti neighborhood south of the Great Mosque, showcases the architectural style of Ramla’s notable families during the Ottoman era. (Hanoch Sheinman)

We spent two short seasons excavating. All of the paid labor were Arabic-speaking Palestinians from the Galilee, so  Arabic was the working language at the site, and my Arabic is very basic. But together with Tawfiq and another archaeologist from Chicago, Donald Whitcomb, I studied up on the Umayyad period and what a mosque from this time might look like. That was my first attempt to go out of my comfort zone.

The more recent attempt is the work I’ve been doing in Qadas, a Palestinian village depopulated in 1948 when it was occupied intermittently by the Israeli army and Arab Liberation Army troops. The inhabitants fled and became refugees in Lebanon. In order to understand what I’m doing there at Qadas, I had to engage with a large number of people that I had never spoken to before: scholars of the Middle East, Shi’i residents of that area of the Galilee, and people who could tell me about the battles of 1948 and the Arab Liberation Army.  We opened up [the Israeli] archives, so it became a very extensive study of the whole context of this excavation.

This was a very long-winded explanation of why when you don’t have an academic curriculum or intellectual basis for the excavating, it will have no meaning. Only when I turn it into a focus of study does it become archaeologically significant. 

On top of that, Israel’s antiquity laws only apply to sites or objects dating back before 1700. Anything from more recent periods, even if it was excavated ethically, was never interpreted or curated in a significant way. 

The ruin-scape of Qadas, located near the Galilee city of Safad/Tsfat, after cleaning, August 2023. (Sasha Flit)

To pull us back to the present, how do you understand the dissonance between being opposed to the legislation extending IAA authority to the West Bank and then taking part in the conference at the Dan Jerusalem Hotel in the occupied part of the city? 

When someone from my university speaks at that conference, perhaps they’re promoting a graduate student who did some excavation there, or they want to get ahead and to get [their research] published. Or they’ve gotten money from the government and they want to show the government that they’re not antagonistic to it — so that they’ll continue getting support. 

Archaeology is an expensive business. It needs outside support and people are reluctant to go against the government. Look no further than what is happening in North America. We in the Israeli left are gobsmacked by the rapidity of the collapse of the liberal front in the Ivy League universities — the rapidity with which people jettison all of their beliefs and try to cozy up to [the U.S.] government. It’s really the same mechanism [in Israel]. It’s where the power is.

And people triangulate and they say, “Ok, my name will be on the lecture, but I won’t deliver it. I won’t actually show up at the conference, but I will give it my tacit approval by being part of it. It’s for the good of science.” I think only a tiny minority would say, yes, we are in favor of annexation and illegal Jewish settlement. 

I don’t think the conference in occupied East Jerusalem is so important. I was more so shocked by the participation of people from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and from Manitoba than the participation of Israelis.

How has Israel’s archaeology community responded to the destruction of Gaza over the past year and a half? And now that, at least among Israeli liberals, the narrative has shifted from one of uncritical support to one of a war of choice — a war for Netanyahu’s political survival — has the tune changed?

It hasn’t responded at all. There has been no official response by any group except Emek Shaveh. At the beginning of the war, we set up a response group, which included some people from Emek Shaveh, and Dotan Halevy and Tawfiq Da’adli, and we tried to monitor the destruction of cultural heritage. And then my co-director at Emek Shaveh, Alon Arad, and I published an op-ed on the whole phenomenon of destruction and how we, as archaeologists, see the pursuit of maximum destruction of Palestinian heritage everywhere since 1948. 

The damage in the vicinity of the Church of Saint Porphyrius, locally referred to as the “Greek Orthodox Church”, February 12, 2024. (Omar El Qattaa)

Certain archaeologists did participate in a very public way in the forensic retrieval of human remains in the kibbutzim, in the places that were attacked on October 7. That was part of a kind of civil society effort in the absence of any kind of government response. So it was archaeologists using their expertise to help in a positive way, but it was also manipulated by some members of the community to support the Israeli position and anti-Hamas war propaganda.

People who I had worked with — who had participated in scholarly discussion of Yanis Hamilakis’ and my book — withdrew and became part of this group of Israeli academics that were really upset by the response of the global left and the pro-Palestinian response to October 7. These archaeologists were sort of in this Eva Illouz camp, if I can use her as a typecast: they said, “We thought we were leftist, but now that we’ve seen what the left is, we’re no longer leftist.” They were pretty upset with me for being outspoken, but never said anything out loud, which is par for the course. 

Last November — a few weeks into the fall semester at Tel Aviv University — I initiated a daily strike where I and a few other people would stand on the lawn of the university and hold signs against the war. Eventually others joined, but there were never more than 20 or 30 of us there. This was against university regulations. I was approached by security and by counter-demonstrators. It created a small but vociferous resistance.

A couple of graduate students told me what I was doing was terrible — that some of my students serve in the military, in the reserves, and that I am accusing them of war crimes. I often wondered: Who do you represent? Why are you so confident that you represent all of the reserve officers? 

But the tune has changed with the recent renewal of bombings [in mid-March]. I think that’s the inflection point here — the fact that Israel didn’t see through the ceasefire agreement. And I think from that point on, the academic response has grown exponentially. People are willing to identify as being against the war. So until the ceasefire, you could not publicly on campus call for an end to the war. That was considered a violation of university regulations.

So the tune has changed, but does opposition to the war at all center Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza? And among your archaeology colleagues — what about the utter destruction of all the mosques and many churches in Gaza? 

It’s a question I have for my colleagues: You’re upset about the dismantling of some ancient wall in the West Bank, and yet you said nothing about hundreds of sites that were wiped out in Gaza.

I recently received a book from a German colleague, a biblical archaeologist who is about my age.  I don’t think he made any public statements about the war on Gaza but he wrote an 850-page monograph collating everything that’s known about the antiquities of Gaza. It has no statement at the beginning except we don’t know what has happened to all these sites, and expresses some general hope for the well-being of everyone involved. And this in Germany [where anti-Palestinian repression has intensified]. 

This type of humanistic response, it’s a great thing to do. It’s a resource, a service to the community. It illustrates the importance of that tract of land, its history, its depth, everything that Israelis want to ignore. But the German guy did it, not an Israeli guy.

• Archaeology
• Israeli academics
• archeology
• Annexation
• Gaza
• West Bank

Dikla Taylor-Sheinman is a NIF/Shatil Social Justice Fellow at +972 Magazine. Currently based in Haifa, she spent last year in Amman and the previous six years in Chicago.

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About Us

Emek Shaveh is an Israeli NGO working to prevent the politicization of archaeology in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Emek Shaveh is an Israeli NGO working to defend cultural heritage rights and to protect ancient sites as public assets that belong to members of all communities, faiths and peoples. We object to the fact that the ruins of the past have become a political tool in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and work to challenge those who use archaeological sites to dispossess disenfranchised communities. We view heritage site as resources for building bridges and strengthening bonds between peoples and cultures and believe that archaeological sites cannot constitute proof of precedence or ownership by any one nation, ethnic group or religion over a given place.

The archaeological artefact tells a complex story which is independent of religious dictates and traditions. Listening to this story and bringing it to the wider public can enrich our culture and promote values of tolerance and pluralism. We believe that the cultural wealth of this land belongs to the members of all its communities, nations and faiths. An archaeological site is comprised not only of its excavated layers, but also its present-day attributes – the people living in or near it, their culture, their daily lives and their needs.

We view the practice of archaeology as an endeavor that can benefit the common good. The various means of involving local communities in work on the site in or near which they live, whether it is managing its heritage, engaging in joint excavations, developing the site, or devising tours that combine visits to the site with an introduction to the local community — strengthen a community’s relationship to its wider environment, yield economic dividends and can bring about significant social change.

We believe that becoming familiar with the complex and diverse history revealed through archaeological research can teach us something essential about ourselves, and cultivate an appreciation of this country’s vast cultural diversity, in the past and present.

Our work:

• Maintaining regular contact with communities living in or near sensitive archaeological sites in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israel. We monitor archaeological activities in these areas including infringement of Palestinian property rights and cultural heritage rights. We document these issues in reports, press releases and position papers for policy makers and the general public.
• Protecting heritage sites from development and construction plans for the benefit of the public. We file objections with planning and construction committees and launch public campaigns and take legal measures against the transference of ancient sites to private foundations with economic, religious or nationalist agendas who exploit archaeology in the service of these interests.
• Public advocacy with decision-makers, the media and the general public thorough tours, lectures, meetings and conferences to help raise awareness to the political use of archaeology as a means for taking over lands and historical narratives. We promote a pluralistic discourse that reveals the diversity of the cultural heritage of this country, and Jerusalem in particular, and work to cultivate a perspective that considers archaeological sites as the shared heritage of all the communities and peoples living in this land.
• We conduct community excavations designed to strengthen a local community’s relationship to an archaeological site and to their local heritage. Community excavations increase environmental and social awareness and can strengthen cooperation between different communities living side by side within or near cultural heritage sites.

Professional and Ethical Principles that guide our work as Archaeologists and Heritage Professionals:

1. We believe that heritage sites can be used to promote understanding between members of different nations, cultures and groups, and should not be used as a means to claim ownership or historical rights over a given site.
2. Archaeology in general, and in Jerusalem in particular, reveals the rich and diverse fabric of human history, which has universal appeal.
3. Archaeology tells an independent story about human existence, culture and achievements. It is not selective nor is it subservient to sacred texts.
4. Each archaeological stratum contributes to the understanding of history. Archaeology does not rank cultures hierarchically.
5. An archaeological site is comprised not only of historical layers, but is significant in the present-day lives of people who live in or near it, and may form a central part of their culture and daily lives.
6. We are not interested in proving links between modern ethnic identities (e.g. Israeli, Palestinian, or European) and ancient peoples (e.g. Phoenician, Judean or Crusader).
7. Because archaeology offers an independent view of human and social origins, it is inherently critical of all historical narratives.
8. When the archaeological and textual narratives overlap, each serves to illuminate the other: both are interpretive and neither one represents an absolute truth.
9. As archaeologists expropriate public property, the use they make of this property must be justified, particularly to the public whose property was expropriated.

The Team

 Alon Arad, Shira Vizel, Talya Ezrahi, Chemi Shiff, Uri Erlich, Muhannad Anati

Our Supporters

Emek Shaveh thanks the following for their generous support:

• FDFA
• HEKS 
• Cordaid
• The Royal Norwegian Embassy Tel-Aviv
• Irish Foreign Ministry
• Oxfam GB
• CCFD-Terre Solidaire
• Oxfam Novib
• European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR)
• EU Peacebuilding Initiative
• New Israel Fund
• Foundation for Middle East Peace
• Beller Moses Family Foundation

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Frequent Questions about Jerusalem’s Old City

Frequent Questions about Jerusalem’s Old City

September 10, 2013

How old is the Old City?

The walled city as we know it was established by the Romans as ‘Aelia Capitolina’ in the second century CE, after they had destroyed the great capital city of Judea. Since its foundation, this city was destroyed and reconstructed several times, but maintained, more or less, its external outline. The visible city, then, is comprised mainly of buildings constructed in the period of Ottoman (16th-20th centuries) and Mamluk (13th to 16th centuries) rule, but it incorporates buildings of the Crusader, Early Islamic and, in its foundations, of the Byzantine and even Roman periods.

Where, then, is the original Jerusalem?

If ‘original’ means the earliest town to bear the name Jerusalem, it can be found outside the Old City walls, on the southeast spur of the Temple Mount. There, within the mound of Ancient Jerusalem (the ‘City of David’) lie the remains of the first town, built by Canaanites in about 1800 BCE, nearly a millennium before the city was established as capital of Israel and Judah. If ‘original’ refers to the city described in the Bible and sacked by the Babylonians, it lies partly on the ancient mound, partly on the Temple Mount ridge, and partly within the southern quarters of the Old City. If ‘original’ refers to the city that reached its greatest extent under Herod and his descendants, the city destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE – it extends beneath the entire Old City and well to its north. Its remains, however, can hardly be seen on the surface, with the exception of the retaining walls of the temple enclosure.

So the real Jerusalem lies beneath the surface?

For those of us who live in the real world, the real Jerusalem is that which exists today: old and new, Palestinian and Israeli, religious and secular. But ‘real’ Jerusalem is also composed of memory and identity. We are free to choose the personal or historical memories, the religious or national, communal or familial identities that provide meaning to our lives. Jerusalem is very much an artifact of longing, faith and passion. Who could say that such images of Jerusalem are less real than the buried remains?

To be sure, archaeologists cannot impose memory on anyone. But their work is not subject to an imaginary Jerusalem: It can and should provide new and unexpected perspectives on various aspects of reality, and its discoveries should influence the stories that we tell about the city.

But surely the main archaeological periods are Jewish? David and Solomon? The First Temple? Herod’s temple?

Jerusalem’ history begins 7000 years ago, and runs on to the present. In between, there are certainly remains of Biblical Jerusalem, especially from the time of the later kings of Judah, but we should really avoid using religious terminologies for archaeological periods. There is, in fact, no physical evidence for the temple of Solomon and his successors. There is no evidence for rituals such as sacrifices or for the existence of priests, or of anything that we might associate with Jewish religious practice. Given the limited possibilities for excavation, it is not too likely that such remains will ever be found. We can’t even pinpoint the actual location of the temple, and have no attestation of its existence outside of the Bible. In archaeological terms, therefore, the material culture that characterizes Jerusalem between about 1000 and 550 BCE is best characterized as Iron Age, and it is quite similar to that found well beyond the borders of Jerusalem and Judah.

As for the period of Herod and Jesus, the remains of the Temple enclosure are more impressive, but these remains – which may have been in use only for a few decades before their destruction – do not determine the cultural character of the rest of Jerusalem, let alone that of the region. The dominant material culture of the time was Roman, and the greater proportion of all archaeological finds in Jerusalem reflects the cultures of the dominant empires: Hellenistic (from the conquest of Alexander to the Roman conquest), Roman (until the conversion to Christianity), Byzantine (Roman-Christian) and of course, Islamic (with a Crusader interlude).

Are you saying that David and Solomon never existed? That they and the temple are myths? That there is no evidence for Jews in Jerusalem?

Not at all! We are saying that there is a gap between people’s expectations from archaeology and what it can deliver. Pushing the archaeological envelope and transforming ruins into political flash-points should not be the solution. Archaeology can support different historical scenarios, but it neither conclusively proves nor absolutely disproves them.

Are there rules in archaeology? Is there archaeological truth?

If history is imagined as a broken pot, of which only a few sherds remain, archaeology can offer a reconstruction of the pot, based on a preconceived notion of its shape, on reason, and on plausibility. Each additional piece that is recovered improves the reconstruction: allowing certain possibilities and ruling out others. This is an endless process: there always remain alternate versions of events. But each find reduces the number of plausible alternatives, and may sometimes rule out a reconstruction that had been popular before it was found.

The search for the most plausible story, like the attempt to get at the truth in a court of law, is conducted by following multiple lines of evidence. Reconstructions based on multiple lines of evidence enjoy greater scientific credibility. Nonetheless, scientific plausibility often comes into conflict with beliefs and preconceptions. In such cases, there is disagreement on the very rules of engagement, and it cannot always be resolved.

Still, you can dig objectively, can’t you?

To allow archaeologists to compare the results of one dig to another, they have developed rules of ‘good practice’. These rules establish, for example, a proper way of excavating (from top to bottom, or from later to earlier), recording standards (planning, photography, and narrative), standards for conservation and description of finds, and so on. A fundamental precondition of good practice is the full disclosure of excavation methods and of the finds, whether remarkable or run-of-the-mill.

Still, good practice does not create objectivity. There is no way of neutralizing the personal and social context of the excavators, and these influence the manner in which they collect their evidence. Moreover, many things happen in and around an excavation that require contact with the outside world: choosing a location, negotiating with other stake-holders, the extent of the work carried out. And then we have the interpretations of the excavation and its results. All these are no longer codified by ‘good practice’; they require individual decisions based on personal values. And so, ‘objective’ rules are always subject to ‘non-objective’ realities.

Why shouldn’t the Israelis be allowed to run their excavations as they see fit? Surely they’re highly professional?

Jerusalem is contested ground, and the past has become hostage to this contest, with each side trying to tell a story that excludes the other. Historically, archaeology has been used in such situations by interested parties – in 20th century Europe, in the post.Soviet bloc, and elsewhere. In Jerusalem, the influence of ideological sponsors on archaeology has been strongly felt, causing many doubts about the veracity of the finds presented and the degree to which all periods receive equal treatment. Therefore, we think that Israeli archaeology should be closely scrutinized and held to account.

A free and professional archaeology should be measured by its independence; by its ability to reveal something new about ourselves, our forebears, and the people around us. It should help dispel ignorance, preconceptions and myths about the past. It should give voice to those forgotten by history, and tell us about human engagement with changing environments, about the development of technology and human imagination, culture and community. The archaeology of Jerusalem, spanning 7000 years, should tell a far more complex, diverse, interesting and broadly relevant tale than that created to support a particular political creed.

Surely you are not comparing the Israeli excavations to what the Islamic Waqf inflicted on the Temple Mount!

Unfortunately, there is a degree of symmetry between the activities of the Jewish religious authorities in the Western Wall area and the Muslim religious authorities on the Haram el-Sharif (Temple Mount). Both removed many tons of earth and fill from subterranean chambers, in one case – along the entire length of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount (the Western Wall Tunnels), and in the other – from the ancient vaults beneath the el-Aqsa mosque. In both cases, the Israel Antiquities Authority could offer only token resistance.

Viewed in quantitative terms, Israel has in fact inflicted the greater damage on historic buildings in the Old City. In 1967, while clearing the Western Wall plaza, the entire historic Mughrabi neighborhood, including a mosque, was razed to the ground after the eviction of its residents. The renovation of the Jewish quarter entailed the destruction of many centuries-old buildings before archaeologists arrived on the scene.

But the issue is not, after all, one of quantity or even of quality. Scientific precision has little value where deeply held religious and political convictions hold sway, and comparisons are rendered meaningless when each side can see only its own interests.

Why do you say that archaeology lies at the heart of the conflict?

Archaeology is central to the conflict because it is a field of confrontation between two competing attitudes to the past, and the past is central to the collective identity of each side. Without the belief in Jewish national continuity, there would be no Israeli-Zionist consciousness. Without a belief in their attachment to the land, there would be no Palestinian consciousness. Archaeology is directly relevant to the identities of both sides.

Israel was founded on principles of modernism and development. Archaeology itself was born within modernity, in the context of increasing interest by the West in the Orient. Modernism established a gap between past and present. While the present was devoted to progress and industry, the past was designated as something to be studied, protected, fenced off or put in museums. In the Orient itself, however, people lived their lives within a landscape that was itself a product of thousands of years of human settlement. The past was not fenced off and set apart, but was part of the fabric of life – sometimes revered and protected, and sometimes used as a material or symbolic resource.

When the West arrived in Palestine, its entry was experienced, among other things, through the demand by the British authorities to stop using the past as a local resource, even leading in some cases to the removal of ancient objects and structures and their relocation in museums in Palestine or overseas. Moreover, Zionists began to make the claim that the land itself, and sometimes the very houses in which Palestinian Arabs lived, actually held proof of Jewish priority that trumped the rights of the inhabitants. Archaeology began to be experienced as a wedge driven between the Palestinians, their landscape, and even their homes. Nowadays, with each instance of archaeological “proof” of Jewish presence that is championed by Israeli media, archaeology becomes more deeply implicated in the attempt to separate Palestinians from their homeland.

If Palestinians and Israelis are ever to enter a serious dialogue on a future of coexistence and mutual respect, Israeli archaeology must end its involvement in the battle of identities, promoting understanding between cultures rather than ethnic exceptionalism. It must broaden its horizons and become much more than a prop to given histories.

Why not have each religion – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim – care for its own heritage?

As in every historical city, periods and cultures in the Old City of Jerusalem are intertwined, above the surface as well as below. There are those who would wish to promote the existence of an authentic Jewish Jerusalem hidden beneath the Muslim city; one that can be accessed in the tunnels of the ‘City of David’ and the Western Wall. But that is an illusion: the vaults and tunnels are not all of the same time, and most are modern creations, made up of Ottoman period cisterns, Mamluk vaults, and rock-cut installations of Roman date or earlier.

A denominational division might work for religious buildings (and even those are often shared). But archaeology needs, on the one hand, the protection of ‘color-blind’ legislation (which doesn’t value one culture over another), and on the other – the protection afforded by a mutual respect for heritage based on the understanding that buildings and ancient remains might have different significance for different people, and that their mere age does not determine their value.

What, then, is the solution? What archaeology can be done in Jerusalem?

The solution is to stop treating the past as an extension of faith and national mythology, and to reinstate the archaeological past as a universal human narrative; to conserve significant remains from every period in the city’s history and to allow all those living in and visiting Jerusalem to discover the memories most meaningful to them. Archaeologists will tell of the people of Jerusalem throughout its history: their houses and streets, what brought them together and what kept them apart, the languages in which they spoke, their economic life, their domestic animals, their decorative and artistic creations, their wealth and poverty, their names, their food and even their musical instruments. They will tell of the beginnings of Jerusalem, thousands of years before the great religions came into being, of the history of its waterworks since the days of the Canaanites, of the people of Judah, who showed far more interest in the fertility of their women than in the relations between priests and kings (neither the one or the other have left any material trace), of the lead coffin makers of the Roman period, who decorated their caskets with ropes in order to keep the dead in their place, and of the artisans who filled Islamic Jerusalem with their unique architectural treasures. They will also tell of Jerusalem’s dead and of their graves and tombs that surround the city on every side, and which contain thousands of individual tales of people who lived here or who came from the four corners of the earth to be buried here. This archaeology will not confine itself to antiquity: archaeologists, as students of material culture, will record contemporary Jerusalem and discover, along with the people themselves, the truths embedded in its diverse physical reality.

Everyone, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, believer or agnostic, nationalist or cosmopolitan, will be able to find something in these stories that speaks to them or to their community, or that surprises and even angers them. But no one will be able to say that “archaeology proves” one thing or another, because it is as diverse as life itself.

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https://www.guidestar.org.il/organization/514214295

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