Archaeological treasures from Gaza’s five main archaeological sites were removed from the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem in what the school’s director called “a high-risk operation, carried out in an extremely dangerous context for everyone involved—a real last-minute rescue.”
As reported in the Guardian, Israel ordered the school to evacuate its storehouse in the ground floor of a Gaza City residential building before a threatened military strike on Wednesday.
The space was home to relics from Gaza’s five main archaeological sites, including a fourth-century monastery designated as a Unesco world heritage site where exposed mosaics remain even after damage incurred.
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“With almost no international actors left on the ground, no infrastructure, nothing functioning, we had to improvise transport, labor and logistics,” said Olivier Poquillon, director of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF). The secret operation, he added, was conducted with “the overriding concern, as a religious organisation, of not endangering human lives.”
The removal occurred in the midst of ongoing threats of further strikes in Gaza, where Unesco has identified damage to 94 heritage sites surveyed by way of satellite imagery.
Of the recent operation, René Elter, an EBAF-affiliated archaeologist, said, “We saved a large part, but in a rescue you always lose things, and you always face painful choices.”