The Stolen Past -West Bank Looting

By Karen Lange


National Geographic Staff -December 2008ぉ


For a thousand years the ruins of Khirbet Tawas, a Byzantine jewel
crowning a gentle slope planted in olive trees, stood southwest of
Hebron. Graceful rows of columns stretched the length of the basilica,
watching over the church's ornate mosaic floor. Then, in 2000, the
second intifada struck with the force of an earthquake. As Palestinians
fought Israeli troops, the West Bank became all but ungovernable. Soon
the Israelis set up a web of security checkpoints, sealed off the
region, and barred most Palestinians from working inside Israel. Jobless
men looked for cash wherever they could find it. Armed with shovels, a
small band descended on Khirbet Tawas.


With ruthless efficiency the looters dug beneath each foundation and
into every well and cistern, searching for anything they could sell:
Byzantine coins, clay lamps, glass bracelets. In the process they
toppled columns and riddled the site with holes, erasing the outlines of
walls and doorways—and the only surviving record of thousands of ancient
lives. What was once an archaeological treasure and tour stop became a
moonscape of craters and rubble. Abu Mohrez, a local imam and
shopkeeper, begged the looters to stop, to no avail. He places his hand
over his heart and grimaces with regret. "They wrecked the place, and it
used to be beautiful."


Since the start of the second intifada, looters have overrun not just
Khirbet Tawas but countless other archaeological sites that crowd the
West Bank (map, opposite). Few jobs, inadequate law enforcement by both
Palestinian and Israeli authorities, and demand for artifacts just
across the border in Israel have created the perfect setting for
looting, says Morag Kersel, an expert at the University of Toronto on
the illegal antiquities trade.


The West Bank is a cradle of civilization, of farming and settled towns.
It is also a crossroads of empires. Down its spine of low, stony hills
marched the armies of ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece,
and Rome. And for billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, it is
sacred ground: the land Abraham sojourned in, Moses pressed toward,
Joshua claimed, and David and Solomon ruled in glory; the place where
God became flesh; the holy center to which the Prophet Muhammad took his
mystical nighttime journey. Yet this priceless legacy is swiftly being
lost. "Years from now, I don't know what archaeologists will find when
they do excavations here," laments Salah Al-Houdalieh, director of the
Archaeology Institute at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. "They are
destroying a cultural heritage that belongs to every Palestinian, to
every human being."


While some major sites remain unharmed —Herodium, for instance, is
protected by a nearby Israeli military base—in many places the scale of
the destruction is almost industrial. Looters attack ancient sites with
backhoes and small bulldozers, scraping away the top layer of earth
across areas the size of several football fields. Then, guided by metal
detectors—coins often give away the location of other goods—they sink
shafts to extract anything of value. Among the rock-hewn tombs that
honeycomb the hills around Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem, and Hebron, grave
robbers methodically clean out each centuries-old chamber, dumping the
bones and hauling off the limestone ossuaries.


In Sair, a town perched on a hillside northeast of Hebron, a middle-aged
man speaks with pride of looting as his "work"—the only job he's ever
known: "After the occupation [in 1967], when we were boys, there wasn't
anything to do or anything to eat. So all of the people went to dig in
the archaeological sites. And I saw what they could find." Four decades
later, circumstances remain much the same. "Our economy is damaged,"
says another man who sells illicit antiquities. "We need to feed our
families."


Palestinian law forbids looting of archaeological sites, as well as
trade in, or possession of, antiquities. But the pillage proceeds
unchecked. Sentences are light, typically a few weeks in jail. Critics
say the Palestinian Authority could do more to educate its people about
the value of their archaeological heritage. Yet both Palestinian and
Israeli authorities are hindered by the West Bank's jigsaw of
jurisdictional lines.


Under the 1993 Oslo Accords and subsequent agreements, Palestinian
officers are supposed to have jurisdiction in cities, towns, and some
large villages. They can also enter areas jointly controlled by the
Palestinian Authority and Israel, but only after notifying the Israeli
military. Entering territory governed solely by Israel (which
encompasses some 60 percent of the West Bank) is, practically speaking,
forbidden. Palestinian officers who risk going in usually keep a low
profile, wearing plain clothes and carrying no weapons. Given such
limitations, the outcomes are predictable.


A typical story: One night Namr Boja and five other Palestinian officers
went unarmed to arrest villagers near Bethlehem who were digging through
tombs. "We shouted, 'We are police! Stop!' " he recalls. "But they
surrounded our group and attacked us with rocks."


Israeli soldiers, for their part, can rangeeverywhere. Yet because
Palestinians consider any show of Israeli force in the West Bank a
provocation, Israel's civil administration is reluctant to send soldiers
to drive off looters. "We can't protect sites next to Palestinian
villages," says an exasperated Yitzhak Magen, archaeological staff
officer for Judaea and Samaria, Israel's term for the West Bank. "We
can't go there."


The absence of Israeli patrols and restrictions on Palestinian police
effectively leave archaeological sites unprotected, says Hamdan Taha,
the Palestinian Authority's antiquities chief. "The system has
collapsed."


Some looted artifacts are bought by middlemen who supply shops in
Israel, where tourists and pilgrims eager to take home a piece of the
Holy Land unwittingly underwrite the trade. Other artifacts are smuggled
into Jordan, then on to big-time dealers elsewhere in the Middle East,
especially the Persian Gulf states of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Dealers in
those countries, in turn, sell the artifacts to outlets in Israel
without revealing their provenance.


In Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa, the sorrowful path tradition says
Jesus walked to his execution, looted antiquities are sold beside
souvenir vials of blessed soil, water, and oil. Tiny ancient coins such
as the mite the New Testament says a poor widow brought as her offering
go for $100 and up. Fragile vases of rainbow-tinted glass designed to
hold a Roman mourner's tears bring $700 to $1,000.


The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) inspects shops and follows up on
reports of looted antiquities—defined as any artifacts illegally
excavated after the 1978 Antiquities Law took effect. The law requires
that artifacts be tracked through assigned inventory numbers, but the
rule is easy enough to get around, admits Amir Ganor, head of the IAA's
Robbery Prevention Division. Dealers skirt the law either by buying
"laundered" artifacts from the Gulf, or doing the laundering themselves
by selling registered artifacts to tourists, then reassigning the
inventory numbers to looted items that look similar. While tourists are
supposed to obtain an export permit before leaving the country, most
don't—because dealers often keep silent about the requirement. Some
travelers are caught at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport, but most pass
through undetected.


Alarmed by the spike in looting, Palestinian lawmakers have proposed
increasing the maximum prison sentence for damaging archaeological sites
from three years to five. Yet political circumstances and deep mutual
distrust continue to hamper police on both sides of the border.


In January, Palestinian police slipped into the no-man's-land between an
Israeli settlement and a Palestinian village near Bethlehem. There they
caught an Israeli and a Palestinian in the middle of what police believe
was an antiquities deal. Inside the Israeli's car they found a satchel
full of ancient coins, jewelry, and glass. The officers' success was
short-lived, however. The Palestinian spent less than two weeks in jail,
and the Israeli was turned over to authorities in Israel—who then
released him. He hadn't violated any Israeli law.