IDF vandals smashed sites that survived the centuries
The Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City has told the story of Palestine for more than 1,600 years. It has been a Philistine Temple, a Byzantine church, a mosque and Crusader church. In the early 1200s it was rebuilt again as a mosque, to be destroyed by the Mongols in 1260, by an earthquake a few years later and restored by the Ottoman Turks in the 1500s.
In the 2020s it was ruined again by Israeli bombing. Its distinctive octagonal minaret has somehow survived as a mutilated stump. It’s not just precious human lives that Israel forces destroy in Gaza. Two years of relentless bombing with rocket and drone attacks flattened more than 200 historical sites of varying significance.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has engaged in a desperate bid to get the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO to put sites on its protected World Heritage list and pressure Israel not to flatten them. UNESCO also maintains a “tentative list” of sites awaiting the rigorous formal process of registration. The PA put forward 14 sites; top of the list is the historic centre of Gaza, including the Great Omari Mosque and the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, built in the year 425.
Why Israel hates UNESCO
Israel is the only major country not to be a member of UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency. It pulled out in 2018 when the agency listed the Old City of Jerusalem as being in Palestine, which is its international legal status. Israel accused UNESCO of ignoring its own historic connections with Jerusalem.
The US left at the same time but rejoined in 2023 during Joe Biden’s presidency. Last year President Trump announced that it will leave again, citing its “anti-Israel sentiment”.
Israel also objects to Palestine being recognised by UNESCO. It was admitted in 2011. The US will leave on December 31 this year.
The church has a tradition as a place of refuge, and 19 people, including eight children sheltering from the bombing were killed when it was hit by Israeli rockets in October 2023. Also in the heart of Gaza’s Old City stood the Qasr al-Basha, a 900-year-old palace and fortress. It was a seat of power for the Ottoman rulers, with its domed halls, stone arcades and carved decorations bearing the imprints of successive eras.
In December 2023, an Israeli missile struck the palace, reducing it to a shapeless ruin. Israeli bulldozers rolled over the remaining walls to complete its obliteration. “Palestine is not just a space of political conflict, but a civilisation rooted in human history,” says Marwa Adwan, head of world heritage at the Palestine Ministry of Tourism. “Listing sites like the Great Omari Mosque…is an initial international recognition of their global value and their urgent need for protection.”
Israel objected to the PA’s approach to UNESCO, particularly to the listing of sites in areas of the West Bank under its military control. Israeli heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu called the Palestinian move “archaeological terrorism”…aimed at seizing sites of “Jewish historical importance”. But Israel itself has been accused of erasing Palestinian heritage. It has designated dozens of sites in the West Bank as “Israeli heritage sites” to occupy the land.
Gaza had its own museums displaying historic artifacts, and for good measure Israeli explosives demolished two of those as well. The Rafah Museum had Gaza’s main collection of ancient coins, copper plates and jewellery. It was an early victim in the war, destroyed in an air strike in October 2023.
The Al Qarara Museum in Khan Younis displayed artefacts dating back 3,000 years to the Bronze Age civilisation that lived across the Middle East in the second century BC. All that remains are shards of pottery and smashed glass after another October 2023 air strike.
