A day before launching a ground offensive in Gaza City, Israeli officials issued a cryptic statement about the safe transfer of rare archaeological artifacts associated with the Christian community there. Accompanying Monday’s announcement were images of a storeroom lined with historical finds and boxes being loaded onto trucks.
Left out of the statement was the back story: how French officials and the Vatican had raced to save the objects after the Israeli military warned of its plans to bomb a building containing the warehouse of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem, which has been excavating in the region since 1890.
In a place where numerous cultures have lived and sometimes clashed over millenniums — including Canaanite, Egyptian, Philistine, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenic, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and British — claims to land and history are hotly disputed. Ruins and relics therefore can be seized upon as proof of who truly belongs on the land.
Some questioned the emphasis on Christian relics. The warehouse, holding finds from three decades of excavations at major archaeological sites, represents only a part of Gaza’s cultural heritage over more than 5,000 years. Much of that heritage has already been damaged since the start of the war in Gaza nearly two years ago.
Archaeologists say that is a loss for everyone. “There is no winner when heritage is destroyed,” Olivier Poquillon, the archaeological school’s director, said in a phone interview. “Heritage is something we have in common, and when it is destroyed it is like cutting the roots of a tree. Whatever my cultural, religious or ethnic background, I am losing part of my own history.”
Mr. Poquillon, who is also a Dominican friar and a lawyer, has friends in high places. When he learned last Wednesday of the immediate evacuation warning, he reached out: to UNESCO, to French authorities, to the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem and even to the Vatican, he said.
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The post A Rush to Save Ancient Artifacts in Gaza Highlights All That Has Been Lost appeared first on New York Times.
