Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas views ancient bottles during a visit to the “Gaza, Crossroads of Civilization” exhibit at the Museum of Art and History in Geneva on April 26, 2007. | Image Credit: AFP
The war has taken a terrible toll on the Palestinian territory’s rich heritage, with Gaza’s ancient Greek site of Anthedon bombed, its “Napoleonic Palace” destroyed and the only private museum burned.
But in a strange twist of fate, some of its greatest historical treasures are safe in a warehouse in Switzerland. And ironically, thanks to the blockade that has made life such a struggle in the Gaza Strip for the past 16 years.
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Based on satellite images, the UN cultural agency calculated that some 41 historical sites have been damaged since Israel began pounding the besieged area after the October 7 Hamas attack.
On the ground, Palestinian archaeologist Fadel al-Otol keeps tabs on the destruction in real time.
As a teenager in the 1990s, before going on to study in Switzerland and at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Mr.
“All the archaeological remains in the north have been hit,” he said by phone from Gaza.
The 13th-century al-Basha Palace in Gaza City’s old town was “totally destroyed. It was bombed and (later) bulldozed. It had hundreds of antiquities and magnificent sarcophagi,” Mr Ottoll added.
Napoleon is said to have lodged in the ocher stone building at the disastrous end of his Egyptian campaign in 1799.
Archeology is a highly political issue in Israel and the Palestinian territories, with discoveries often used to defend the rights of the two warring peoples.
Pivot point
Israel has an army of archaeologists who have unearthed an impressive number of ancient treasures, despite its rich past thousands of years ago, Gaza has remained relatively untouched by the trowel. The only sheltered natural harbor between Sinai and Lebanon, Gaza has been a crossroads of civilization for centuries. An important point between Africa and Asia and a center for the incense trade, it was coveted by the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Ottomans.
A key figure in excavating this glorious past over the past few decades has been Jawdat Khoudary, a Ghazan construction entrepreneur and collector.
Gaza had a property boom in the 1990s following the Oslo peace accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority. When the construction workers dug into the soil, they found lots of artifacts. Mr. Khoudary collected a treasure trove of artifacts that were open to foreign archaeologists.
In 2004 Mr. Marc-Andre Haldiman, curator of the MAH, Geneva’s museum of art and history, couldn’t believe his eyes when he was invited to look around the gardens of Khoudary’s mansion.
“We found ourselves in front of 4,000 objects, including an avenue of Byzantine columns,” he said.
An idea quickly formed to host a major exhibition at the MAH to highlight Gaza’s past and then to build a museum in the territory itself so that Palestinians could take ownership of their own heritage. At the end of 2006, some 260 objects from the Khoudary collection moved from Gaza to Geneva, some later as part of another hit exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.
But in June 2007, Hamas drove the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza. And Israel imposed its blockade.
As a result, Gazan artefacts could no longer return home and were stuck in Geneva, but the archaeological museum project failed.
But Mr. Khoudary did not give up hope. He built a museum-hotel called Al-Mathaf on the Mediterranean coast north of Gaza City. But the Israeli ground offensive came after the Hamas attack on October 7.
“Al-Mathaf remained under Israeli control for months,” said Mr. Khoudary, who fled Gaza to Egypt. “As soon as they left, I asked some people to go there to see the condition of the place. I was shocked. Many things were missing and the hall was set on fire,” he said.
Mr.
But with any return impossible for now, MAH’s current curator Beatrice Blandin said “discussions are underway” for a new Gaza exhibit in Switzerland. Mr. Khoudary is excited by the idea.
“A collection of important objects of Gaza’s history is in Geneva. If there is a new exhibition, it will allow the whole world to learn about our history,” he said from Cairo.
“It’s an irony of history,” Mr. Haldiman said he was trying to get his friend Mr. Otol out of Gaza safely.
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