On the Archaeological Meaning of the Proposed Changes in the Law of Antiquities for the West Bank (Judea and Samaria)

דף הבית » מאמרי לוקוס » On the Archaeological Meaning of the Proposed Changes in the Law of Antiquities for the West Bank (Judea and Samaria)

On the Archaeological Meaning of the Proposed Changes in the Law of Antiquities for the West Bank (Judea and Samaria)

Ianir Milevski (Israel Antiquities Authority)

An amendment to the Law on Antiquities has been advanced at the Knesset by the government. The Israeli Archaeological Association,^[1] the Archaeological Council of Israel, archaeologists and historians from the Israel Academy of Sciences,^[2] and even the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority have all expressed their opposition to this amendment.^[3] Additionally, the Emek Shaveh organization has published a public document opposing this law, which de facto implies an annexation of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) to the State of Israel.^[4]

I will not go in details into the circumstances of this law, but its clear intention is to take advantage of the war in Gaza, to advance political agendas in the Palestinian territories, including the violation of the current Israeli Law of Antiquities and the international law pertaining to illegal excavations in the West Bank, as is the case of Har Ebal.^[5]

However, archaeologically, does this amendment to the law have any scientific basis? For archaeologists in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, or foreign colleagues working in Israel/Palestine/Jordan, does this law have any archaeological meaning, or is it just the case of right-wing extremists not respecting the law, the international ones, including those of the UNESCO and the Geneva Convent and the Israeli ones? It is clear – as pointed out in all the documents mentioned before – that the new law will be recognized in the world immediately as the intention of the State of Israel to violate international law, and will undoubtedly cause sharp reactions harming the already weak international cooperation that exists in the fields of archaeology and other human sciences.

I will take a step and go beyond the declarations of all the above quoted organizations and colleagues, to reflect on this question. The main part of the project of law to be taken into account is the following:

“There is no dispute that these areas are rich in Jewish history, and thus these findings have no historical or other affiliation with the Palestinian Authority. Therefore, the discussion on the political status of the areas of Judea and Samaria is irrelevant to determining Israel’s responsibility for the archaeological findings that belong to its people, hence this bill – which is intended to extend the authority of the Antiquities Authority to these areas as well. Additionally, the Civil Administration lacks the knowledge and means to properly handle the scope of archaeological findings in these areas, and as a result, the condition of antiquities in Judea and Samaria today is dire.”^[6]

The statement that the Archaeological Officer of the Civil Administration (Kamat) theoretically lacks the knowledge and means to protect these remains, but the IAA has them, does not consider as an option, the possibility that other institutions could do proper archaeological work, for instance, the Palestinian Authority Heritage department or foreign universities. If the Kamat has handled archaeologically in the West Bank so badly for years, then maybe is time to totally hand over this responsibility to the Palestinians?

Furthermore, the IAA lacks the means to do more preventive archaeology, due to its meager budget from the Ministry, because the budget for fieldwork, research, and publication of archaeological excavations inside Israel is dependent on finance from private contractors and developers. This means that even in Israel, the IAA does not have the necessary means from the state to do a proper job since the state has disowned its responsibility to sufficiently fund archaeological activity. Not only has the state been shifting the IAA from one ministry to the other but it has prioritized the destruction of antiquities in the name of development (e.g. Tel Bet Shemesh,Tel Yarmuth to name just two of many). The budgetary argument also perpetuates the assumption that it is acceptable that Israeli archaeologists work in the West Bank, they just need to be better funded in order to do this.

A second issue relates to the laws focus on the destruction and lack of care of Israelite remains and those relating to Jewish history in the West Bank, which need to be saved by the IAA since only Jews care about these remains. In the same vein it could be argued that we in turn give the Palestinian Authority, or other Arab countries, the right to excavate Islamic period remains in Akko, Sefad, Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Lod, Ramle, Beersheva, and other parts of Israel. Following this principle, the Vatican and the Greek Orthodox Church have the right to excavate all Christian sites, and even Turkey, the ancient capital of the Byzantine Empire should have the right to excavate the sites related to the late Christian tradition. Italy can also claim the right to excavate the remains of the Roman legions in Megiddo, Binyanei Hauma, or Masada. Greece and Macedonia should have the right to excavate the remains of the occupations by the Hellenistic troops in fortresses. Egypt could have the right to excavate Tel es-Sakkan or Tel Erani, the most important sites with Egyptian occupation in the southern Levant at the end of the 4th millennium BC. Last but not least, Iraq and Iran could claim the right to excavate the Assyrian, Babylonian, Achaemenid, or Sasanian sites in Israel in which their soldiers were once located.

As important, is that according to the logic of the proposed law reform, the State of Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Jewish archaeologists in general, do not have the right to excavate non-Israelite or non-Jewish sites, maybe 90% of all the archaeological remains in the country.

The reform to the law clearly represents what the political experts call “post-truth politics” or “post-reality politics” applied to archaeology. This term characterizes discourses in which the facts are totally distorted to pursue goals that cannot be sustained by real facts and are generally destined to be disseminated to a non-scientific public who cannot prove or disprove these discourses.

We then return to the general ethical archaeological question – to whom does the past belong, to whom do the antiquities of a country, belong? In my point of view, the answer to these questions is that archaeology is a social discipline whose goal is the preservation and research of antiquities no matter their period, cultural or political attribution. Archaeology should serve research for all of humankind, in order to learn about the past of all communities, cultures, and periods. Hence, antiquities are a social asset. Formally archaeology has national or regional forms, but its contents are human and social. This is the basis of the very ethics of archaeology, and it is hoped that most of the archaeologists in Israel concur with this.

Archaeologists have a responsibility to disseminate their research for the public good, not to serve private or governmental enterprises for economic or political profit. National states have the obligation to preserve the antiquities in their territories, without any discrimination. This is the time also to ask for archaeology to have an appropriate budget from the state, for teaching, excavation, survey, research, and preservation of heritage, without any political interference.

If we are preoccupied that the policies included in the new reformed law will cause serious damage to archaeological research in Israel as a whole, we must change dramatically the policies -not only regarding archaeology- but all other aspects of human and social life in the country, for the best of all populations in the region. Archaeology can only have the place it deserves in the future of humanity under conditions of real peace, based on free, secular, and democratic regimes, in which peoples and countries preserve antiquities of all periods and cultures.

^[1] https://israel-archaeology.org.il/%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a8-%d7%a2%d7%9e%d7%93%d7%94-%d7%94%d7%a6%d7%a2%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%aa%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%9f-%d7%97%d7%95%d7%a7-%d7%94%d7%a2%d7%aa%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%95%d7%97%d7%95%d7%a7/

^[2] https://www.academy.ac.il/News/NewsItem.aspx?nodeId=658&id=2889

^[3] Nir Hasson in Haaretz 11.7.2024. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-11/ty-article/.premium/allowing-israel-antiquities-authority-to-operate-in-west-bank-is-equivalent-to-annexation/00000190-a32c-ddf1-abb6-efedbd390000

^[4]https://emekshaveh.org/en/annexationist-law/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR33Vi3fMsjprq5GQvH7PNnrJ1qvGJ1ipAH6qUgaOqN49SjNQzSPBOKT_a0_aem_IR7ErJnKc3rO0KSVyOlEVw