Jerusalem (AP) – Nine hours of hectic negotiations with the Israeli military. A last-minute scramble to find trucks in a destroyed Gaza Strip in which the fuel is scarce. Six hours of desperate packaging, carefully stacking cardboard boxes on open platform trucks.
With an Israeli air raid, the aid employees carried out a rescue mission at the last minute to save thousands of priceless artifacts from a gaza strip from a gaza strip before the building was flattened.
The warehouse contained artifacts from over 25 years of excavations, including objects from a Byzantine monastery from the 4th century, which was shown by the UN Culture Organization UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, and some of the oldest known evidence of Christianity in Gaza. The Israeli military said that the building had housed the installations of the Hamas secret services and planned to tear it down in Gaza city as part of its extended military operation.
“It’s not just about the Palestinian heritage or the Christian heritage, it is something important for the World Heritage Site that is protected by UNESCO,” said Kevin Charbel, the emergency field coordinator for Première Dringce Internationale (PUI), a humanitarian organization that worked in the Gaza.
Negotiate against the clock
Cogat, Israel’s defense authority who is responsible for humanitarian aid, announced the PUI about the demolition plan last Wednesday morning. The warning was triggered by a notification system managed by the international NGOs to tell the Israeli military that a certain area is a sensitive place such as a school, a hospital or a warehouses that have humanitarian aid.
Charbel, who is based in Gaza city on a temporary humanitarian rotation, spent nine hours to negotiate with the Israeli military in order to enable workers to bring the artifacts to a safer place. But the challenge was greater than just holding the military. When Israel expanded its company in Gaza city, other organizations were disordered, and nobody could locate trucks so that they transport the artifacts at short notice.
“Five minutes before I had to accept, this would evaporate in front of us, another actor offered us transportation,” said Charbel. Pui worked with the Latin patriarchy of Jerusalem to bring the artifacts to a safer place in Gaza city, which is not announced for security reasons.
The French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF), a revered archaeological institution in the region, which supervised the excavation of the dead sea in Israel, was responsible for the storage of around 80 square meters (860 m²) of archaeological artifacts in Al-Kawthar high level in Gaza. PUI provided security for the website.
Dozens of old archaeological sites were found in Gaza, including temples, monasteries, palaces, churches, mosques and mosaics. Many of them are lost due to the urban spread and looting. The UNESCO fights to keep some of them that remain. Some of the locations come from 6,000 years when Gaza was a central stop on the trade routes between Egypt and the Levant and the emergence of urban societies began to change agricultural villages.
The artifacts saved this week include ceramic jugs, mosaics, coins, painted plaster work, human and animal remains and objects that, according to UNESCO, were excavated from the Saint Hilarion monastery, one of the oldest known examples of Christian monastic communities in the Middle East.
No time for normal preparation
Shortly after sunrise on Thursday, the workers stormed to pack five platform trolleys with as many sensitive artifacts as possible in six hours. Artifacts that were carefully kept and documented in the camp were in a hurry in cardboard boxes, with almost 2,000 -year -old ceramic resting on the sandy floor.
Charbel noted that the transport of such old artifacts usually requires intensive preparation and special provisions to protect sensitive objects, which was not possible in this case. The Israeli military does not allow the use of closed container trucks and exposes additional dangers to the artifacts. On the way, several objects were broken and others had to be left behind. Israel destroyed the building on Sunday and claimed that the Hamas had positioned observation posts and intelligence collection infrastructure in it.
Last week, Israel demolished several high -rise buildings in the city of Gaza to evacuate part of his dramatic warnings to civilians about the soil offensive on Tuesday morning.
While Israel’s ground operation extends, the artifacts are kept in a different place in Gaza city. However, they are outside, are exposed to the elements and remain in great danger when strikes intensify.
UNESCO said that Israel had damaged at least 110 cultural sites in the entire Gaza strip since the beginning of the war, including 13 religious sites, 77 buildings with historical or artistic interest, a museum and seven archaeological sites.
During the archaeological rescue, Charbel said, he and other auxiliary workers also struggle with deeper questions. Does it make sense to lead so many resources, including urgently needed fuel and truck to risk the lives of several people who have worked with constant bombing, for lifeless historical objects when the humanitarian situation is so bad? Charbel said he was concerned that he had to spend so much time about the archaeological artifacts when they also had to negotiate with cogat about life -saving water, food and medicine.
“But we accepted this because it is so valuable that this stuff is so important for world history and also the Palestinian history,” said Charbel. “You would delete early examples of Christian history in Palestine forever.”