PLUNDERING PALESTINE - Jerusalem Quarterly

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Why Are Those Men in Black Camping Near the Wall? An Israeli ‘archeological dig’ along the path of the wall in al-Jib in the West Bank. Al-Jib is the site of 7 th -8 th century wine cellars and has been identified as the Biblical ‘Gibeon’ through Hebrew inscriptions found by James Pritchard in 1956. The modern village is home to some 5,000 Palestinians who will be encircled by the wall Israel is building through the West Bank. Photo credit: Adel Yaha/PACE Two colleagues on an early autumn walk near Bir Nabala, a Jerusalem-area village now cut off from Jerusalem by the Wall Israel is constructing through the West Bank, asked themselves this question and wondered whether to investigate. Despite the looming presence of the Wall, their walk had been pleasant. A Palestinian man tending his orchard had provided a bag of pomegranates; workers at a stone quarry invited them for tea and told stories of their problems of living in Hebron and working near Ramallah–the ‘absence of movement’ tales that often dominate Palestinian interchange. Our colleagues, a sociologist and an anthropologist, always have their investigative antenna out, so the Men in Black had likewise to be interrogated. They were forthcoming but the information they gave was disturbing: they announced themselves Druze police attached to the Israeli army and charged with guarding a temporary archaeological ‘dig’ along the Jerusalem Quarterly 33 [ 3 ]
course of the Wall. “It’s all ours,” they explained, waving their hands over the land and what lay beneath it. 1 When the Men in Black declared “It’s all ours,” they were in violation of international law (particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention) but nonetheless operating within the bounds of a certain kind of Israeli legality. In an important new book, Eyal Weizman points out that “on the same day that Arab Jerusalem and the area around it was annexed to Israel, the Israeli government declared the archaeological and historical sites in the West Bank, primarily those of Jewish or Israelite cultural relevance, to be the state’s ‘national and cultural property’, amounting to de facto annexation of the ground beneath the Occupied Territories, making it the first zone to be colonized.” 2 The manner in which Israeli law undergirds illegal activity in this colonized zone–and the destruction of the non-renewable resource of the cultural heritage of Palestine– concerns a number of authors in this special issue of Jerusalem Quarterly. New opportunities for archaeological looting provided by the construction of the Wall are carried out by agents of the Israeli state, and accompany the “matrix of control” (Jeff Halper’s phrase) represented by the Wall. Similarly, the construction of Road 6, whose north-south course also produces more annexation of West Bank land, was accompanied by Israeli ‘salvage archaeology’ that yielded a range of “material objects…sherds and ceramics and an extensive cemetery…variously attributed to periods ranging from the Iron Age, Persian, Hellenistic and Early Roman to late Byzantine.” 3 In his article in this volume, Adel Yahya notes that about 1,500 archaeological sites are isolated between the Wall (in its western course) and the Green Line, including over 250 ‘high potential’ sites–a tempting array indeed for Israel’s ‘salvage’ operations. These state operations are joined on the other side of the Wall by what Adel Yahya calls Palestinian ‘subsistence looters’, driven by poverty and enabled by the lack of Palestinian security and enforcement. Palestinians “looting in their backyard” are integrated into Israel’s ‘legal’ market of antiquities, where Yahya estimates they receive perhaps 1% of the value of the objects they offer. Like Morag Kersel in this volume, Yahya opposes the legal trade in antiquities–both in Israel and Palestine–as a course that leads both to illegal looting and the destruction of a cultural heritage that belongs to all. Kersel offers a carefully-considered review of “the historical antecedents, the current practice, and the future initiatives” of cultural heritage law and the trade in antiquities, including Ottoman, Mandate and current Israeli legislation. While noting the inequities in the interim (Oslo) agreements, where Palestine is obligated to safeguard archaeological sites but there is no Israeli reciprocity, Kersel examines the Palestinian Draft Cultural and Natural Heritage Law 2003 and cautions that confirming a legal trade in antiquities may further endanger a heritage already in peril. The Jerusalem Quarterly would welcome interventions on this critical question from its readers. [ 4 ] EDITORIAL Why are Those Men in Black Camping Near the Wall?
Page 1 and 2: PLUNDERING PALESTINE Ownerless Obje
Page 3: Table of Contents EDITORIAL Why Are
Page 7 and 8: law applied in the West Bank and th
Page 9 and 10: later resold to Arab schools. Some
Page 11 and 12: war and exile in Egypt, where Sakak
Page 13 and 14: the collection project had begun -
Page 15 and 16: Two other things seem worthy of men
Page 17 and 18: The National Library and Orientalis
Page 19 and 20: The Owners of the Objects Following
Page 21 and 22: 19 I recently had the opportunity t
Page 23 and 24: the cultural heritage of the region
Page 25 and 26: as commodities, consumer demand and
Page 27 and 28: as a springboard, and in consultati
Page 29 and 30: for the fifth draft on Palestinian
Page 31 and 32: Chapter 4 Section 20 Presumption of
Page 33 and 34: Later in the draft under Section IV
Page 35 and 36: The archives of the IAA also contai
Page 37 and 38: In interviews conducted as part of
Page 39 and 40: 19 Garstang, “Eighteen Months Wor
Page 41 and 42: and thereby devising a comprehensiv
Page 43 and 44: tomb robbing from foreign archaeolo
Page 45 and 46: Impact of the western separation wa
Page 47 and 48: ministry appeared willing to accept
Page 49 and 50: Khalat al-Qadat The most interestin
Page 51 and 52: The excavation had uncovered what a
Page 53 and 54: That may be true, but conditions in
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epatriating antiquities are still e
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Reparation for Lost Palestinian Pro
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ights of Palestinian land owners st
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it sought to shield itself from lia
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Annex 7 included details concerning
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Endnotes 1 United Nations General A
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There are more revelations in Pappe
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The most prominent of these was Ord
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Jewishness-Judaism has many faces a
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a truly commercial run of the volum
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Kletter does one thing that is virt
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‘Time Out’ in Jerusalem Penny J
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Counting Game: Israel In, Palestine
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‘I Come From There and Remember
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these buildings are permanent - hom
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Poverty in Jerusalem is growing at
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