For centuries, the ruins of a fortress on a low hill in the Judean Desert known as Tal‘at ed Damm were mostly untouched. Recently, however, archaeologists have begun excavating the site to see what secrets may lie in its neglected ruins.

One day earlier this year, as storm clouds billowed overhead, a group of archaeology enthusiasts made their way to the fortress to see the preliminary findings firsthand.

Standing on the ancient route between Jerusalem and Jericho in today’s West Bank, the fortress is immersed in a serene landscape that looks as if it has barely changed since the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels were redacted millennia ago. Before the dig, the site had been known to contain remains from the Crusader period, which lasted from 1099 to 1260, and then was used as an inn for travelers in the following centuries.

But as the group looked on, archaeologist Yodan Fleitman removed two sandbags from the floor and revealed a surprise the excavators had unexpectedly discovered: a mosaic.

“Mosaics were not common in the Crusader period,” he said. “This likely means that the Crusader fortress stood on a Byzantine structure [dated between the 4th and 7th centuries CE].”

Fleitman and his team were not from the Israel Antiquities Authority, which oversees most of Israel’s digs, but rather the Archaeology Unit of the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration, the Israeli body that governs civilian matters in the disputed, antiquities-rich West Bank.

The cradle of monotheism and crucible of kings, armies, rebels and prophets, the West Bank is a veritable treasure trove of history, home to a tapestry of thousands of archaeological sites spanning from prehistoric times to the centuries of Ottoman rule that ended with World War I.

A visitor stands next to a Crusader fortress at a site known as Tal‘at ed Damm near Kfar Adumin in the West Bank in February 2025. (Rossella Tercatin/Times of Israel)

But it is also home to some three million Palestinians and a deeply entrenched Israeli military occupation that is increasingly taking on civilian characteristics. Politics, religion and history swirl together, creating an environment where unearthing, documenting, preserving and studying antiquities — much of it intensely significant to hundreds of millions of people worldwide — can be both fraught and byzantine.

In recent years, Israel has launched several new excavations in the area — including a massive mission to search for more documents from the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls — bringing the neglected state of many of these sites to the public’s attention.

Yet understanding the scope of Israel’s responsibility — and rights — when it comes to antiquities in the region is a complex, highly politicized issue that reaches into the very core of Israel’s entire relationship with the West Bank.

The Oslo Accords of the mid-1990s sliced the West Bank into three zones: In Area A, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to exercise full control, in Area B the PA manages civilian affairs but Israel has security control, and in Area C (which includes over 60 percent of the West Bank and all of its Israeli settlements), Israel’s military wields full control, including over Palestinian civilians.

Under the demarcation, the Defense Ministry’s archaeologists have the license to deal with antiquities in Area C alone, leaving areas B and A to the PA to excavate or grant licenses for digs. Because Israel’s control of the West Bank is a military affair, civilian bodies like the Israel Antiquities Authority, or IAA, are meant to remain out of the territory altogether.

But that may be changing.

A bill introduced last year proposes transferring the responsibility for antiquities in the West Bank from COGAT to the IAA in response to claims of widespread neglect of important historical sites.

But while experts admit that there are serious problems with how archaeology in the West Bank is handled, archaeologists and others are nearly unanimously opposed to the measure, accusing the government of seeking to use antiquities as a pretext to deepen the de facto annexation of the West Bank.

Digging in

In February 2023, the government put forward a bill aimed at reassigning responsibility for antiquities in the West Bank to the IAA, ostensibly to protect archaeology in the West Bank.

Under the 1989 Law of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the IAA is responsible for overseeing archaeology and archaeological sites in Israel’s sovereign territory, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which were effectively annexed in the 1980s.

The IAA is a statutory authority, a body established by law that operates independently but with some governmental supervision. The IAA budget comes mostly from the government.

The IAA’s governing council, which also appoints its director, is composed of 16 members, including officials from various government ministries and experts selected in consultation with the ministries.

The law describes the IAA’s primary function as “to attend to all antiquities’ affairs in Israel.”

In its original version, the bill was set to add the term “and the area” after “in Israel,” with “area” described explicitly as “Judea and Samaria” — the biblical name for the West Bank and the standard term used in most Hebrew-language discourse.

Palestinians attend Eid al-Adha prayers outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs, known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi mosque, in the West Bank city of Hebron, on June 28, 2023. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

The small textual change would have represented a serious shakeup, scooping responsibility for antiquities in the West Bank away from the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration and placing it directly under the aegis of the IAA.

Organizationally, the Civil Administration manages civilian affairs in the West Bank through several staff officers in various fields, who are tasked with implementing policies analogous to their civilian counterparts across the Green Line. The staff officers are hired and funded by civilian bodies inside sovereign Israel, though they work under the Defense Ministry.

Days before the law was introduced, the government voted to move the archaeology staff officer away from the Culture Ministry and into the Heritage Ministry, headed by far-right firebrand Amichay Eliyahu of the extremist Otzma Yehudit party.

In a press release announcing the change, the government said the move would “bolster activities to counteract and prevent the destruction of antiquities.”

“I plan to place special emphasis on rescuing and preventing destruction at heritage sites in Judea and Samaria, for the coming generations,” Eliyahu said in the statement.

All the experts who spoke with The Times of Israel recognized that there is widespread damage plaguing ancient sites in the West Bank. Most blamed the local Palestinian population, though the left-leaning Emek Shaveh group also accused Israeli settlers.

Nonetheless, the bill has been met with widespread criticism, with the IAA itself rejecting outright the idea of taking over archaeology in the West Bank.

MK Amit Halevi attends a Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, July 18, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

“Antiquities in Judea and Samaria have been in a horrible situation for decades,” Likud MK Amit Halevi, who introduced the bill, told The Times of Israel over the phone.

“This is, in my opinion, the most important place in the world — where the Jewish nation was born,” Halevi said. “Abraham stood here some 3,700 years ago, our people returned from Egypt 3,200 years ago, and our history unfolded here for centuries to come.”

‘This is the most important place in the world. Abraham stood here some 3,700 years ago, our people returned from Egypt 3,200 years ago, and our history unfolded here for centuries to come’

According to the Civil Administration’s Archaeology Unit website, there are over 2,600 archaeological sites in the West Bank.

Notable biblical sites listed on the unit’s website include the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, Sebastia; the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron; and Tel Shiloh, where, according to the Bible, the Jewish Tabernacle was housed for some 400 years. Several Hasmonean fortresses, the palace of the 1st century CE Jewish-Roman King Herod, and the Qumran Caves, where most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, are also located in the West Bank.

Though the West Bank is rich in Christian and Muslim sites as well, none are mentioned by the unit on its website.

For both Israel and the Palestinians, archaeology in the West Bank isn’t only about the past but about the future. Many Israelis who support holding onto the West Bank do so not only on security grounds, but based on the argument that the territory represents the heart of the Jews’ ancient promised land.

For them, archaeology represents a way to bolster the argument that their hold on the land is rooted in history, said international law expert Tal Mimran, an associate professor at Zefat Academic College.

“It serves very well in the battle of the narratives, but also as a legal claim about the rights to the territory,” he said.

Graffiti sprayed by unknown perpetrators at the ancient archaeological site of Sebastia, near the West Bank city of Nablus, November 30, 2024. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)

But under international law, Israel can only do archaeological work in the West Bank if a site is threatened and in need of preservation, and currently that work can only be carried out by the Civil Administration’s relatively small Archaeology Unit.

Halevi claimed that the bill is needed because “Palestinians have been robbing and destroying every archaeological site.”

However, neither an army spokesperson, the officer in charge of the Archaeology Unit, nor a Heritage Ministry spokesperson provided The Times of Israel with data about damaged sites or perpetrators.

And while both have boasted of efforts to crack down on Palestinian looting of antiquities sites, they have been largely silent regarding damage wrought by settlers, including a July incident in which extremists allegedly set fire to an area next to the ruins of the 1,500-year-old Church of St. George.

A fire burns next to the archaeological site of the ruins of the Church of St. George in the West Bank town of Taybeh, July 9, 2025. Residents allege that local settler extremists started the fire. (Nabd ElHaya online radio station)

The attack next to the important Christian site in the Palestinian town of Taybeh drew international condemnation, but no charges have been brought.

There was no response from COGAT or the Heritage Ministry when asked about harmful settler activity.

In 2020, Preserving the Eternal, a right-wing organization with ties to the settlement movement, released a survey alleging widespread damage among 365 archaeological sites it surveyed in the West Bank.

The report found that 80 percent of the survey sites had suffered some form of damage: 41% moderately and 39% severely. It described the selected sites as bearing “the greatest significance for national and world cultural heritage.”

This picture taken on November 24, 2020, shows an aerial view of the Herodium fortress, with King Herod’s tomb site and the theater built by Herod the Great in 23-15 BCE in the Judean Desert, southeast of Bethlehem (Menahem Kahana / AFP)

While the group maintained that the report was conducted by “senior archaeologists and skilled field explorers,” the names of the archaeologists were not mentioned, and the study was not published in an academic journal.

A separate survey by a group of Palestinian archaeologists in 2024 found evidence of looting at 309 of 440 West Bank sites, according to Salah Al-Houdalieh, an archaeology professor at al-Quds University.

Israeli military actions and policies restricting movement were to blame for the increase in looting, Al-Houdalieh charged in a January article in anthropology magazine Sapiens.

“Curfews and checkpoints have severely hindered the efforts of the West Bank’s Palestinian archaeologists, heritage organizations, and security personnel to access, monitor, and safeguard these vulnerable sites,” he wrote. “Looting has always been an issue, but the recent escalation of hostilities by Israel against Palestinians has led to an increase in antiquities looting, as tens of thousands of unemployed people struggle to meet their most basic needs.”

Preserving the Eternal founder Moshe Gutman called for the protection of all antiquities sites of interest regardless of cultural affiliation and identity of the perpetrators, acknowledging that Israelis were also among them.

Gutman, who has no formal background in archaeology, says he got interested in the topic after noticing looters digging around the West Bank during bike rides around the region. He started the group in 2016.

“We started to receive testimonies [of damage] from many sites of archaeological or touristic interest,” he told The Times of Israel over the phone. “This is how Preserving the Eternal was first established.”

The group has partnered with Regavim, a pro-settlement organization founded by far-right Religious Zionism party head Bezalel Smotrich to campaign against illegal Palestinian construction in the West Bank and by Bedouin inside Israel.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, West Bank, on July 3, 2024. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

Gutman claimed that dozens of archaeologists cooperate with Preserving the Eternal, but do not wish for their names to be made public for fear of backlash.

“We need to make order in the law, determine the rules on how and what we are taking care of,” Gutman said of the new bill. “A law does not solve anything [by itself], but it is part of the answer.”

Civil dispute

An IAA spokesperson declined to speak to the Times of Israel about the legislative initiative, but pointed to a written objection to the bill it sent to the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee ahead of a February discussion on the legislation.

In it, the IAA warned that “the proposed law in the current form could cause great damage to the academic ties of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the State of Israel with international entities and damage their professional reputation.”

“The Council of the Israel Antiquities Authority agrees that supervision and enforcement should be increased with respect to damage to antiquities in Judea and Samaria, but only through other alternatives,” the statement read.

‘The proposed law in the current form could cause great damage to the academic ties of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the State of Israel with international entities and damage their professional reputation’

Even without the law, the IAA already collaborates with the Civil Administration’s Archaeology Unit, including on an ambitious survey of some 500 caves in the Judean Desert it has spearheaded since 2017.

To get to the caves, which researchers think may contain treasures related to the ancient Jewish sect that created the Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeologists must rappel down rockfaces and set up work camps on sheer cliffs.

The unprecedentedly wide-ranging operation is being undertaken by the IAA in cooperation with the COGAT Archaeology Unit, which is headed by Benny Har Even, who holds the title of staff officer of the department. The project is funded in equal parts by the two bodies and the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage.

The inter-office cooperation is key to the success of the operation: About half of the Judean Desert, including the original source of most of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, is located in the West Bank beyond the Green Line, where the IAA does not have jurisdiction. But the COGAT archaeologists have been seamlessly enfolded into the teams, said Amir Ganor, the head of the IAA’s anti-theft unit during a 2021 press conference, enabling work in the entire Judean Desert.

Workers take part in an Israel Antiquities Authority archaeological survey in the Judean Desert, which straddles Israel and the West Bank, in 2022. (Eitan Klein, Israel Antiquities Authority)

Taking note of the IAA’s position, Halevi has proposed creating a new body vested with the same powers as the IAA and a dedicated budget. A new version of the bill has been discussed but not yet formally introduced.

“Up until today, the IDF has been responsible for the antiquities in Judea and Samaria, without having the knowledge or ability to do it, and this is the reason we find ourselves in the current situation,” Halevi said, noting that the army cannot prioritize protecting antiquities over other security concerns.

According to Halevi, the IAA, with its expertise and resources, would be the best for the job, but as long as the responsibility is assigned to a dedicated civilian entity as opposed to the military, the bill’s goals will be fulfilled anyway.

‘What we suggest is to work under the current legal arrangement and invest more money’

Opponents of the law say that the real cause of neglect at archaeological sites in the West Bank is a lack of resources, arguing that the Civil Administration’s Archaeology Unit should be expanded rather than handing responsibility to a civil body.

COGAT did not provide information about staffing levels for the Archaeology Unit when requested, but The Times of Israel learned from a source familiar with the issue that 39 people were working for the unit at the beginning of 2025. Halevi claimed most of them are only temporary staff, with only Har Even and his deputy full-time employees of the unit.

The IAA, in contrast, employs around 800 people, according to its website.

“[The West Bank] is at the heart of the history of the Holy Land, but what we suggest is to work under the current legal arrangement and invest more money, allowing the Archaeology Unit to hire more staff and professional archaeologists to enforce the law,” said Prof. Guy Stiebel from Tel Aviv University, who chairs Israel’s Archaeology Council, which advises the government and public entities, including the IAA, on matters related to antiquities.

The council is made up of 23 members from all academic institutions and organizations that work in the field.

Suspects in an alleged antiquities theft ring after arrest near Khirbat Umm er-Rus in the Judean Desert in October 2013. (Israel Antiquities Authority)

Many archaeologists say there has been a marked improvement in the status of antiquities in the West Bank since the Archaeology Unit was moved to the Heritage Ministry — and apparently given a larger budget — with Har Even put in charge.

“He has the correct priorities and he cares about this — so he has been putting in a tremendous amount of effort to protect the antiquities and there’s been a huge change,” said Yonatan Adler, an associate professor in Archaeology at Ariel University, Israel’s first university in the West Bank.

The army, the Heritage Ministry, and Har Even’s office did not provide The Times of Israel with information about the budget for the Archaeology Unit.

However, the comprehensive budget for the Heritage Ministry has increased significantly since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing, religious government took power in late 2022. According to data collected by Aviad Houminer-Rosenblum from the Berl Katznelson Foundation based on public records, the ministry budget rose from NIS 48 million ($14 million) in 2021 to NIS 104 million ($30 million) in 2023, though it fell back to NIS 77 million ($23 million) last year.

‘I ask Halevi to be honest and just admit this is about sovereignty’

According to Stiebel, the bill may end up hurting efforts to protect antiquities in the West Bank by putting more limits on enforcement efforts against looters in line with civil statutes.

“The laws [applied in the West Bank] are more severe than Israeli law,” he said. Israeli law affords protections for the accused that military law in the West Bank does not, and has a more onerous burden of evidence.

Har Even himself expressed similar concerns during the February committee meeting, noting that he was currently empowered to act under his own authority.

“I’m afraid we’ll shoot ourselves in the foot,” he said. “If I go by Israeli law, I will have to ask a judge for a warrant for every search of antiquities [I conduct].”

Adler said many experts were worried that the bill was counterproductive.

“We all think it will damage our ability to protect antiquities,” he said.

Tourists visit the archaeological site of Tel Shiloh in the West Bank, March 12, 2019. (AP/Sebastian Scheiner)

He accused lawmakers of being misleading about the real purpose of the bill, which he suggested is linked to a push toward the annexation of the West Bank.

“I ask Halevi to be honest and just admit this is about sovereignty — in the small corner of archaeology,” he said.

Stiebel noted that before proposing the bill, Halevi had not consulted with the council or with any other professional body.

“We [the council] have right-wing and left-wing members, and we all unanimously agree that this solution is bad,” Stiebel told The Times of Israel by phone. “It will not improve the condition of antiquities in the West Bank, and will put us all in a corner.”

Israeli archaeologists are respected professionals at the forefront of the field, Stiebel argued. If the new law were passed, it would offer ammunition to those who push for academic boycotts.

“This move could play into the hands of BDS,” he said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. “I believe this law is politically and ideologically driven, rather than pursued out of concern for the status of antiquities.”

Archaeology without borders?

Adler spoke with The Times of Israel in February on the sidelines of the first international archaeology conference devoted to the archaeology of the West Bank.

Titled “Archaeology and Site Conservation of Judea and Samaria,” the four-day event took place at the posh Dan Hotel in Jerusalem, with funding from the Heritage Ministry.

The conference was sponsored by Ariel and Bar-Ilan universities, and the academic committee steering the summit featured figures from other major Israeli universities.

Despite the serious subject matter, the conference had a festive atmosphere, with dozens of scholars presenting their work before large audiences.

Participants included foreign scholars from major academic institutions such as the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Cornell, an Ivy League university in New York.

Archaeology Unit Staff Officer Benny Har Even speaks at the ‘Archaeology and Site Conservation of Judea and Samaria’ conference in Jerusalem on February 13, 2025. (Rossella Tercatin/Times of Israel)

“There seems to be a consensus that science is science, and there are no borders to science,” said Adler, who was a member of the conference committee. “We don’t distinguish between race, gender, sex, or nationality. We are interested in what’s coming out of the ground, and that’s what this conference is about.”

Unsurprisingly, the event ignited criticism.

Ahead of the conference, Emek Shaveh, which describes its mission as “protecting ancient sites as public assets that belong to members of all communities, faiths, and peoples,” accused organizers of “whitewashing” Israeli archaeological activity in the West Bank.

‘Israel and the settlers whom you have joined have weaponized archaeology in Jerusalem and the West Bank, using it as a lever to dispossess Palestinians’

“Israel and the settlers whom you have joined have weaponized archaeology in Jerusalem and the West Bank, using it as a lever to dispossess Palestinians,” charged Emek Shaveh chairman, Prof. Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University, in an open letter to participants.

“If the true interest of the organizers was the salvage and safeguarding of sites, they would have been better served by a low-key professional meeting,” he added.

The conference also drew international criticism.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologists finished their second season of excavations at the Hyrcania fortress in the Judean Desert in the West Bank in January 2025 in cooperation with the Staff Officer of Archaeology of Judea and Samaria. In the Byzantine compound, they uncovered a medallion mosaic which had been intentionally defaced with a column drum from the Herodian period. (Oren Gutfeld/The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

“This conference normalizes academic activities which are in breach of international law,” the Palestine Exploration Fund, a body established in London in 1856 for the study of the Southern Levant, wrote in a statement, accusing the event of “erasing the geographical identity of that region, the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Illustrating how much gravitas the PEF organization still holds, after the circulation of its letter, at least one international scholar mentioned to journalists covering the conference that he was worried he might lose his job if word reached his university that he took part.

Adler expressed outrage at the PEF statement, noting that contrary to the group’s claims that the conference excluded Palestinian archaeologists, they in fact had been invited but did not wish to participate.

‘These are people that represent a colonialist power, sitting in their office in London and complaining against Jews excavating in certain areas’

“These are people that represent a colonialist power, sitting in their office in London and complaining against Jews excavating in certain areas,” Adler said.

Several Palestinian archaeologists contacted by The Times of Israel declined to comment.

The PEF says it boycotts all archaeological work in “occupied territories.” The Fund’s ethical policy states that the group “does not collaborate with institutions founded by an occupying power based in any occupied territory, and will not support, encourage, fund, or publish research by any academic associated with such institutions.” It added that it “does not associate itself with excavations conducted illegally in the occupied Palestinian territories, the occupied Golan, or in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.”

Recently, Charlotte Whiting, editor-in-chief of the PEF’s peer-reviewed publication Palestine Exploration Quarterly (PEQ), told the Israeli news agency TPS that research conducted in the West Bank can only be considered for publication if the archaeologists “have cooperated with the relevant Palestinian authorities” — a near impossible feat for Israeli archaeologists in the West Bank.

Other academic journals also have guidelines discouraging publication of work conducted under Israeli auspices in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.

In 2016, the World Archaeological Congress passed a resolution urging “international academic publishers to refuse to publish articles by Israeli and international scholars that relate to archaeological excavations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” as a way to place pressure on Israel.

While those wishing to excavate in Israel get permission from the IAA, those wanting to excavate in the West Bank must seek a license from the Civil Administration staff officer.

Data on licenses from 1968 to 2007 shows that nearly all West Bank excavations not carried out by the Civil Administration itself have been conducted by Israeli institutions, aside from a handful of digs by evangelical researchers and one in 1971 by a University of Toronto archaeologist.

Many at the conference were surprised by a closing discussion that bluntly addressed the question of whether Israeli universities should be excavating in the West Bank at all.

From left to right: Dr. Yonatan Adler, Ariel University; Prof. Aren Maeir, Bar-Ilan University; independent researcher Dr. Liora Horwitz; and Prof. Adi Erlich, University of Haifa, at the ‘Archaeology and Site Conservation of Judea and Samaria’ conference in Jerusalem on February 13, 2025. (Rossella Tercatin/Times of Israel)

Panelist Prof. Aren Maeir from Bar-Ilan University said the answer is no.

“The archaeological activity conducted in the West Bank is under the auspices of the Civil Administration, and the reason for that is so that Israel stays within the international law of how we are supposed to act in an area that’s under Israeli occupation,” Maeir told The Times of Israel in a phone interview.

“My opinion is that both the staff officer and anybody else who works in the West Bank should only be doing salvage excavations, which means only excavating when a site is about to be destroyed, and there is no choice,” he added. “Israel, as an occupying party, should not be initiating archaeological projects outside of this context.”

‘The Staff Officer and anybody else who works in the West Bank should only be doing salvage excavations, which means only excavating when a site is about to be destroyed’

Nonetheless, as the head of Bar-Ilan’s Institute of Archaeology, Maeir said he still signs off when colleagues wish to conduct academic excavations in the West Bank.

“I think that the interpretation of the law in Israel is not sufficiently clear-cut for me to be able to tell a colleague of mine that he or she can’t do it,” he noted.

‘Confusing by design’

According to Mimran, who is also a researcher at the Hebrew University, the way Israeli law and authorities treat the status of the West Bank is “confusing by design.”

“The West Bank or Judea and Samaria is what we call in international law ‘a disputed territory,’ namely a territory without a clear sovereign but with several entities which have competing claims, specifically Israel and the Palestinian national movement, both of which present a connection to the territory,” Mimran told The Times of Israel.

International law expert Dr. Tal Mimran, an associate professor at the Zefat Academic College and a researcher at the Hebrew University (courtesy)

According to Mimran, Israel upholds a narrow interpretation of international law that maintains that international statutes and treaties are only relevant for regulating the relationship between states, meaning they do not apply to the West Bank.

“This piece of land was never a part of a modern state,” he noted. “It was either run by colonial powers or by occupying powers, namely Israel and, before it, Jordan.”

Despite rejecting the notion that its presence in the West Bank constitutes an occupation, Israel still applies the laws of belligerent occupation (a body of laws based on the 1907 Hague Regulations, Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and customary international humanitarian law) almost in their entirety, Mimran said.

“Israel contests the full application of the law of occupation, but it states that it is willing to follow norms of a humanitarian character out of goodwill,” the expert explained.

Mosaic removed from the remains of a 6th-century CE synagogue in Gaza by the Israeli authorities in 1976 and currently hosted by the Museum of the Good Samaritan near Ma’ale Adumim in the West Bank, as seen in February 2025. (Rossella Tercatin/Times of Israel)

When it comes to archaeological sites and cultural heritage in the West Bank, no treaty is more important than the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and its two additional protocols, according to lawyer Shlomy Zachary.

Zachary, whose expertise includes protecting cultural property in situations of armed conflict, represents several Israeli human rights organizations operating in the West Bank. In the past, he has often represented the left-leaning Yesh Din.

“These laws shape what can and cannot happen during conflict — for example, the current situation in Gaza — or during an occupation, which is the case for the West Bank,” he told The Times of Israel.

According to the convention, historical and archaeological sites should be excluded from battlefields and cannot be designated as military zones. Salvage excavations are the sole types of digs that are permitted.

‘These laws shape what can and cannot happen during conflict’

“A strict approach entails that only excavations that are required to save a site or artifacts to prevent their destruction are allowed,” Zachary said.

Israel’s long-term presence in the West Bank also includes building roads and other infrastructure, activities that often also require salvage excavations, Zachary said. He charged that Israel had used this argument to expand the scope of its archaeological activity.

Some in Israel also employ a different legal approach, which maintains that regular excavations can also be conducted.

“According to international law, the military commander [of an occupied territory] must maintain all legal arrangements that were in force before the occupation,” Zachary said. “In this case, the Jordanian antiquities law allowed excavations, and therefore, some believe the military ruler can also do the same.”

According to Zachary, however, most international lawyers reject this interpretation because it goes against the 1954 Hague Convention.

Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, in the West Bank, July 20, 2023. (Samaria Regional Council)

Even the Oslo Accords, which included an appendix noting the importance of certain antiquities sites to Jewish tradition and carving out Israeli access, did not supersede international laws regarding archaeology, he said.

“With the Oslo Accords, the PA acknowledged that the Jewish people have roots in the area,” said Zachary. “For example, the IDF can maintain Israeli entrance to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus in Area A. However, it is important to highlight that even these agreements cannot nullify or cancel international humanitarian law provisions.”

The lawyer also noted that the State of Israel itself has so far acknowledged the difference between its sovereign territory and the West Bank, although the distinction was no longer as sharp as it once had been.

The shofar blast signals the end of the work day at the Shiloh archaeological excavation, summer 2017. (courtesy)

“The main storage for archaeological findings [in the West Bank], for example, is located in Ma’aleh Adumim, which is in the West Bank itself, not in Israel — even though today an increasing number of findings are being transported by Israeli authorities to outside the West Bank,” he said, noting that removal of antiquities from an occupied territory is illegal.

“In the last two decades, the involvement of Israeli universities and researchers is blurring the lines more and more,” Zachary added.

What’s really being protected?

According to Zachary, there is no dispute that the Civil Administration is responsible for protecting archaeological and historical sites, including from looting and damage. However, he suggested that effective means could include fencing and cameras, rather than active excavations.

“Since it is an occupied territory, most experts would argue that everything should be interpreted with a narrow approach and for the benefit of the occupied population, not for the occupier researchers or political activists,” he said.

View of the compound of Joseph’s Tomb after it was vandalized overnight in the West Bank city of Nablus, April 10, 2022. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)

Both Zachary and Alon Arad, executive director of Emek Shaveh, suggested that Israel’s claims of protecting antiquities seemed insincere, given its selective enforcement when Israeli settlers are involved in destroying or looting antiquities.

“In Battir, Israeli settlers from an illegal outpost in the area have been destroying with heavy machinery a site that is recognized as a UNESCO heritage site,” Arad said, referring to a village southwest of Jerusalem recognized for its terraced hillsides. “The staff officer for archaeology is not there to prevent it.”

Arad noted that Israel is one of the few modern countries in the world where it is legal to trade antiquities, under a law that allows artifacts discovered before 1978 to be bought and sold. This represents a considerable incentive for looters, he said.

He also accused the staff officer of a lack of transparency.

“Since 2017, they have refused to provide any information regarding their work, including their budget, the archaeologists working for them, the licenses they granted, and more,” Arad said.

The Defense Ministry body did not respond to a request for a response.

The United Nations cultural agency has listed the Palestinian village of Battir in the West Bank as a World Heritage site in danger. Here, Palestinian farmer Elayan Shami, 62, plants eggplants in a maze to direct irrigation water downhill in 2014. (AP/Sebastian Scheiner)

Similar to what was heard from the archaeologists who spoke with The Times of Israel, Arad suggested that the right approach to protect antiquities in the West Bank would consist of checking what is not working in the current system to find solutions within the present legal framework.

However, Arad emphasized that contrary to other voices, Emek Shaveh is clearly stating that Israel should not pass the bill nor annex the West Bank because it is morally wrong, rather than out of fear of boycotts.

‘Israel cannot and should not use archeology to justify acting against the Palestinians’

Even if looting and destruction are happening in the West Bank, it does not give Israel the legitimacy to eschew international law and expand its hold on the territory, Arad said.

“Israel cannot and should not use archaeology to justify acting against the Palestinians,” he said.

Under the Oslo Accords, Israel’s involvement in West Bank antiquities is only supposed to extend to Area C, the 60% of the West Bank where it maintains civil and military control. Areas A and B are ostensibly under Palestinian control, though tending to heritage sites appears to be largely beyond the means of the cash-strapped and relatively power-starved PA.

“Even if there are Palestinian archeologists who care about these things, they don’t have the power or the resources to prevent it,” said Maeir. “The Palestinians also have to be responsible adults and take charge of protecting antiquities in the areas under their responsibility.”

Archaeologists from Bar Ilan University, in cooperation with the Staff Officer of Archaeology, excavated the site of Sartaba/Alexandrium in the Jordan Valley in February 2025. (Yodan Flaytman, Staff Officer for Archaeology in Judea and Samaria)

But according to Arad, even if the PA had the resources, it is largely prevented from acting by Israel.

“The body that would be in charge of enforcing against looting in Area B is the Palestinian Tourism Police,” he said. “However, as a security organization, the police are not allowed to work in Area B. The solution would be to allow them to operate, but Israel is not doing it.”

Annexation exultation

Though his bill waits to be resubmitted, Halevi told The Times of Israel that he was convinced it will eventually pass, dismissing the nearly wall-to-wall opposition.

“I think archaeologists are motivated by fear because they have European friends who are against our sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, or even on the entire Land of Israel,” he said.

As for the claim that the legislation is really aimed at the annexation of the West Bank, his only qualm was with the word “annex.”

A couple climbs the steps leading to the ancient Herodium palace built by Herod the Great between 23-15 BCE in the Judaean desert, southeast of Bethlehem, on November 24, 2020. (Menahem Kahana / AFP)

“Israel cannot annex land that is its own,” he argued. Regardless of the West Bank’s legal status, Israel should treat it like its part of its sovereign country.

“I want to start [with antiquities] because I believe that it is the most important [area] and no one can argue that our history should be under military rule,” he said. “However, I believe that all civil issues in Judea and Samaria should be under Israeli civil authorities.”

Archaeologists raising a hue and cry hadn’t done anything to help the state of antiquities in the West Bank until now, he claimed, and they had yet to put forward a reasonable argument against transferring the responsibility of West Bank antiquities to a civil body.

“The archaeologists are worried about losing funds,” he said. “I told them that a nation should stand by its values.”