In early February, the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MOTA) launched an in depth injury and danger evaluation report on 316 cultural websites throughout Gaza, concluding that 138 had sustained extreme injury—many have been diminished to rubble. The report attributes 71% of the destruction to direct Israeli air strikes and bombings, whereas bulldozer demolitions and tank incursions brought about additional injury.
Compiled by the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation (CCHP), with funding from the British Council’s Cultural Heritage Fund, and in collaboration with Oxford College’s Endangered Archaeology within the Center East and North Africa (EAMENA) staff, it offers an summary of priorities for consultants to plan their response.
The report estimates that the emergency response and mitigation efforts alone, described as part one, would value round €31.2m and take 12 to 18 months, whereas full reconstruction is projected to value round €261m and take as much as eight years.
Regardless of the grim findings, Palestinian heritage consultants are pushing forward with emergency efforts to doc, stabilise and clear rubble from broken historic websites, salvage archaeological stones and safe cultural landmarks. Nevertheless, there’s rising concern that latest US remarks about forcibly relocating Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring international locations might deter a lot wanted donors from supporting restoration efforts.
Pressing intervention should begin as a result of heritage can’t wait, tradition can’t wait
“We hope this won’t be the case, however such feedback danger hindering and negatively affecting financing,” Jehad Yasin, the overall director of excavations and museums at MOTA, tells The Artwork Newspaper. “We would like the US to encourage reconstruction, not impede it, as there’s a global accountability to help within the restoration and rebuilding course of.”
Distant monitoring
The report has drawn worldwide consideration, with consultants turning into more and more conscious of the urgency of the scenario, says the staff chief of CCHP’s injury evaluation report, Akram Lilja. “Now we have acquired curiosity from many worldwide organisations desperate to contribute to Gaza’s cultural heritage reconstruction,” says Lilja from Sweden, the place he relocated after leaving Gaza a number of years in the past. However he provides that many donors are ready for the result of negotiations between Israel and Hamas earlier than committing to funding.
Lilja’s staff started its injury assessments in the course of the conflict. When a website was inaccessible due to navy operations, EAMENA provided help by reviewing high-resolution satellite tv for pc imagery remotely. Michael Fradley, a analysis affiliate at EAMENA, warns that some knowledge might already be old-fashioned as a result of quickly altering scenario on the bottom. “Now that there’s a ceasefire, as individuals are clearing websites—fully understandably—it’s probably that injury will improve. You even have the problems with unexploded ordnance and attainable contamination from different sources,” Fradley says, emphasising the necessity for continued distant monitoring.
Nevertheless, he warns that monitoring Gaza stays a expensive operation and extra funding is required. Till 2020, a US prohibition restricted entry to satellite tv for pc imagery of Palestinian territories, with Fradley enjoying a key function in overturning the ban after years of effort. Nevertheless, free high-quality imagery stays restricted in contrast with different areas that EAMENA covers, and the organisation usually has to pay for it.
Website assessments
Mahmoud Balawi, the preservation officer on the Iwan Middle for Cultural Heritage and a cultural professional for CCHP, cautions that political delays are hindering the hassle to save lots of cultural websites, risking irreversible injury to Palestinian heritage.
“We should begin our pressing intervention as a result of heritage can’t wait, tradition can’t wait,” Balawi says from Gaza. He explains that whereas the organisation has a plan, its efforts are sophisticated by an absence of funds and a scarcity of expert personnel with expertise of engaged on historic websites.
Balawi factors out that the Palestinian vacationer ministry gathered the data for its report with solely restricted sources, underneath tough and infrequently harmful situations. He remembers a harrowing expertise on the Commonwealth Cemetery in Zawaida, the place primarily British troopers who died in the course of the First World Battle are buried. He and a colleague discovered themselves alone and surrounded by Israeli drones. Unaware that the world, marked as a secure zone, was truly a buffer zone. Satisfied they have been moments away from dying, they nonetheless determined to finish their inspection and take photographs. They returned to city safely, feeling as if they’d “been born once more”.
Balawi explains: “I believe it’s a dedication from us to our Holy Land. We expect each one among these websites is like one among our kids, like one among our household.” He says that the cemetery was severely broken, and that its outer wall and gate, together with many graves, had been bulldozed. There have been additionally indicators of aerial bombardment in elements of the cemetery.
Intervention tasks
Final December, Hamoudeh Al-Duhdar, the previous director of websites and excavation at MOTA and a heritage professional helping CCHP, led emergency works at Gaza Metropolis’s al-Qissariya bazaar, funded by the Dutch-based Cultural Emergency Response (CER). The efforts have been essential for safeguarding the location from additional climate injury, notably rainwater seeping into the outdated mud buildings, which might result in their collapse. The return of shopkeepers to the bazaar, regardless of the instability, additionally highlighted the urgency of the intervention.
Positioned subsequent to the seventh-century Nice Omari Mosque, the bazaar is important for the livelihood of Gaza’s Christian group. It suffered extra injury when a wall from the mosque collapsed onto the world throughout a bombardment. Al-Duhdar’s staff eliminated round 240 tonnes of rubble, together with 20 tonnes of salvaged archaeological stones, stabilised the buildings and guarded key historic components. He additionally led the United Nations Mine Motion Service to the mosque, the place it eliminated two unexploded missiles.
Al-Duhdar’s 12-year-old daughter, Mervat, alongside together with his sister and her 5 kids have been all killed in December 2023 when an Israeli missile struck their residence whereas they have been asleep. “My daughter liked my work and went with me to cultural heritage websites. It’s my obligation to guard them, for her,” he says.
Al-Duhdar is at current overseeing emergency works at Pasha Palace, a Thirteenth-century Mamluk-era landmark, because of funding from the Swiss-based Aliph Basis. The palace, which was restored by MOTA and transformed into an archaeological museum, was severely broken by an Israeli strike in 2024. The assault additionally killed the spouse and three kids of Sayed Abdulrazeq, a MOTA museum supervisor who had moved his household there to guard each the gathering and his family members, believing the museum could be shielded from navy strikes underneath the 1954 Hague Conference. Abdulrazeq continues to work on cultural tasks and help CCHP.
Lilja says preliminary inspection of the location revealed no indicators of the 60 or so containers of artefacts that had been saved there. A extra thorough investigation might be performed because the rubble is cleared.
Palestinian patrimony
Whereas the US President Donald Trump has referred to as for others to rebuild Gaza, Palestinians assert they’re the one ones who can lead the hassle to protect their cultural patrimony. Balawi argues that Palestinians are uniquely dedicated to preserving their id via the rebuilding of their landmarks. Al-Duhdar agrees, including: “Around the globe, together with the US, the indigenous individuals are the one individuals who can defend their cultural heritage.”
Sanne Letschert, the director of CER, acknowledges the considerations of Palestinians and says the organisation stays dedicated to their Palestinian companions as they work to guard their heritage and lead their very own restoration. “There has lengthy been a reluctance to help heritage in Palestine, even earlier than latest US remarks, making it more and more tough to mobilise funding in an already underfunded area,” she says. “Whereas donor hesitation persists in some circumstances, it doesn’t deter Cultural Emergency Response.”
Letschert highlights that because the conflict started, CER has earmarked €212,000 for 4 tasks. They embody helping heritage professionals and funding emergency works by CCHP on the 14th-century Younis Al-Nawruzi Citadel, which was severely broken in an Israeli air strike in 2024.
Following the discharge of the injury and evaluation report, Letschert says CER has outlined essentially the most pressing necessities and is actively working to safe funding to help these vital efforts. “The urgency of defending heritage liable to disappearing makes this work extra vital than ever,” she says.
Sandra Bialystok, Aliph’s director of communications and partnerships, says: “Earlier than launching full restoration tasks, we’re ready to see how the present ceasefire evolves, but in addition to have a extra full image of the injury on website.”
Final 12 months, Aliph created a $1m emergency fund to help emergency efforts aimed toward safeguarding Gaza’s heritage. Bialystok confirms the fund is now getting used to help tasks on the bottom, together with stabilising the Nice Omari Mosque, Al-Saqqa Palace and the Dar-Farah historic courtyard.
Aliph can also be supporting efforts to safe three necessary archaeological websites: the traditional website of Anthedon Harbour (Gaza’s first recognized seaport, which can also be on Unesco’s Tentative Heritage Record), the Byzantine Church of Jabalia, and the Roman Cemetery, west of Jabalia, the place vital archaeological artefacts have been found in recent times.
Fradley confirms that satellite tv for pc imagery exhibits destruction and heavy bombardment of buildings across the cemetery, together with heavy automobile visitors throughout the location. However he provides that, as with all archaeological website, the deposits that lie beneath the bottom should still be intact.
The inclusion of Gaza’s historic city material on the 2025 World Monuments Watch in January is more likely to improve consciousness and help for the enclave’s cultural heritage. It was one among 25 websites chosen from over 200 nominations for the programme, which highlights cultural heritage websites in danger.
The response to Gaza’s inclusion on the 2025 World Monuments Watch has been overwhelmingly constructive, in accordance with Jonathan Bell, the vp of programmes on the World Monuments Fund (WMF). He says: “Gaza’s cultural legacy spans roughly 12,000 years, with heritage relationship again to the Neolithic period (10,000 BCE) and a wealth of internationally recognised websites from Neo-Assyrian, Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Mamluk and Ottoman durations. The World Monuments Watch has helped spark necessary conversations concerning the significance of all of this heritage and the necessity for lively safety now and considerate restoration as a part of any future restoration efforts.”
Bell confirms that WMF is working with companions, together with Riwaq, a Palestinian organisation for the preservation of architectural heritage, to evaluation archival paperwork and set up tips to protect Gaza’s historic character for future restoration efforts.
Nevertheless, whereas necessary knowledge gathering and safeguarding is underway, there’s rising concern over the shortage of authority. Fradley says: “Will or not it’s the Palestinian Authority? Will or not it’s Donald Trump? There’s no centralised level to which we may help truly feed this data again.”
