When the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority posted a video on Instagram on January 21, showing Israeli soldiers in a warehouse full of archaeological remains, Jean-Baptiste Humbert immediately recognized the scene. This long-standing resident of the French Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem has rented this storeroom to a Palestinian, in the heart of downtown Gaza, since 2005.
He had already been excavating remains in the enclave for 10 years. In 1995, he was called in by the Palestinian Authority's newly-formed Department of Antiquities, which was then moving into the coastal strip in the wake of the Oslo Accords. This Dominican priest focused in particular on the site of Blakhiya, the ancient Greek city of Antedon. He also trained a whole generation of Palestinians in archaeology, including Fadel Al-Otol, a child from the Al-Chati refugee camp, who has become one of the leading figures in the defense of Gaza's heritage and its rich 5,000-year-old history.
"In the warehouse is the product of 28 years of archaeological research," said Humbert. It includes amphorae from all over the Mediterranean, various types of pottery and the plasterwork of a Hellenistic house. Under international law, the property of the sites excavated by the Biblical School belongs to the Palestinians and is held in custody by the French institution.
Although the upper floors were bombed during the war, the ground floor had remained intact, at least until the soldiers' visit, asserted René Elter, another leading figure in Gaza archaeology, associate researcher at the French Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem and scientific coordinator of Première Urgence Internationale, an NGO that began working in the enclave in 1999. One of his Gazan colleagues visited the site in early January. "There were no more doors. The place had been visited, things taken, mainly planks, tarps, kitchen equipment: It was for survival. But the archaeological collection seemed generally untouched. And that video went viral. I haven't slept since," said Elter.
'Moving these collections'
Images released by the Israel Antiquities Authority suggest that Israeli soldiers searched the depot thoroughly. "The ideal solution would be to organize a mission, to assess the condition of the collections and then weld the door shut until the collections can be moved elsewhere inside Gaza," added Elter.
"We will strongly relay the Biblical School's request to the Israeli authorities: to protect the deposit on site so that nothing disappears or is destroyed," said Nicolas Kassianides, the French consulate general in Jerusalem. In principle, this was the intention of the Israel Antiquities Authority. In a reply to the NGO Emek Shaveh, which works on the archaeological stakes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the institution claims to have been asked by the army to examine the warehouse and to have asked the military to protect the objects on site.
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