Restoration of war-damaged heritage sites in Gaza begins

Dozens of Palestinian workers in hard hats and high-visibility vests armed with pickaxes and wheelbarrows were clearing rubble from the ruins of the Gaza Strip’s oldest and largest mosque.

The remains of the medieval Great Mosque of Al-Omari’s distinctive octagonal minaret and some of its facades are all that remains after it was targeted by Israeli forces during its two-year war with Hamas.

Work has begun to clear and sort the stones since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire began nearly eight weeks ago, but actual restoration work has yet to begin. Israel does not allow construction materials to enter Gaza through the crossing, saying this is consistent with the armistice agreement.

“The challenge we faced was first of all the lack of resources – iron and building materials,” said Hosni al-Mazloum, an engineer with the Palestinian cultural heritage organization Riwaq. “Then we used primitive tools… and were very careful because the stones here are 1,200 or 1,300 years old.”

In her cramped office near Gaza City, Hanin al-Amsi faces an equally challenging task as she pores over fragments of rare ancient Islamic manuscripts recovered from the storage rooms of the 13th-century library of the Grand Mosque of Omari.

“Similar to how we give first aid to people, we give first aid to manuscripts,” the internationally trained conservationist explained via video link.

Ms. Amsi said that when the Old City came under heavy Israeli fire early in the war, a young man in her department risked his life to retrieve some manuscripts. However, a treasure trove of early Islamic works is trapped in the destroyed building.

Since the ceasefire lasted two months in January, Ms Amsi has led a team funded by the British Council, a British cultural and education organization, in trying to recover the manuscripts. They began carrying the rubble by hand.

Ms Amsi said that despite the “catastrophic loss”, it was noteworthy that about 148 of the 228 manuscripts had survived. This is largely due to her pre-war efforts with the British Library to preserve, archive and digitize these works. They are stored in acid-free boxes and kept in iron safes.

“Some of the fragments we found looked as if they had not been under the rubble for 700 days,” Ms Amsi commented. “But others came out looking like a child had torn them into pieces.” To illustrate, she held up a box of charred pieces covered in Arabic calligraphy.

In recent days, Ms. Amsi’s team was able to use heavy equipment to uncover more heavily damaged manuscripts. She said it was now clear that the library’s archives – considered a valuable record of Palestinian history, which contained many Ottoman records – had been completely burned.

Palestinians accuse Israel of deliberately targeting their heritage sites – a war crime. Israel denies this and says its actions comply with international law.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has accused Hamas of destroying important historical monuments and collections, saying the armed group operates “near or underground” at cultural heritage sites. At the Grand Omari Mosque, the Israel Defense Forces said they bombed “a tunnel shaft and tunnel of terror.”

UNESCO has verified the damage to 145 religious, historical and cultural sites in Gaza since the Hamas-led attack on Israel sparked the war on October 7, 2023. It mainly uses satellite imagery for evaluation. Local groups conducting ground surveys believe the extent of damage is much higher.

Gaza’s history goes back over 5,000 years. Different civilizations left their mark: Canaanites, Ancient Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Jewish Hasmoneans, Romans, Christian Byzantines, Muslim Mamluks and Ottomans.

At another site in Old Gaza City, a group of young people were removing buckets of sand and crushed mortar from the remains of the 800-year-old pasha’s palace, revealing the geometric patterns of a mosaic floor.

“What is being done is just the bare minimum,” said Issam Juha, director of the Center for Cultural Heritage Protection (CCHP), which is based in the occupied West Bank and is helping to coordinate the work remotely. “Even for basic interventions we would need cement or lime mortar, which is not available yet.”

This historic fortress was where Napoleon Bonaparte lived in 1799. Recently it was renovated and turned into an impressive museum displaying precious artifacts from French-led archaeological excavations.

“We are dealing with a building that expresses the identity and memory of the Palestinian people,” said Dr. Hamuda Dahdar, a cultural heritage expert who is responsible for the restoration work on site. “We are determined to protect what remains of this important landmark.”

The Israel Defense Forces told me they had no information about why the Pasha Palace was targeted in the war. Locals said it came under Israeli airstrikes and was later leveled by bulldozers.

Trained workers are currently searching through some 17,000 artifacts preserved at the site. Most have been destroyed or looted. So far, only about 30 items have been recovered from the ruins, including a Byzantine sarcophagus lid and clay pots.

Ongoing work is providing much-needed jobs in Gaza, with local cultural groups receiving support from international NGOs.

The Geneva-based Aliph Foundation has allocated $700,000 (£524,000) to emergency work in Gaza since 2024 and said its experts were in almost daily contact with teams on the ground.

The British Council said its partners were carrying out new damage assessments and safety inspections “to understand what heritage work may be carried out in the future” following the recent ceasefire.

“We simply cannot reach many archaeological sites due to the presence of the Israeli army,” said Gaza’s chief archaeologist Fadel El-Otor, who currently lives in Switzerland, where he continues to follow developments.

He cited Roman cemeteries and Byzantine churches east of the Jabaliya camp as places where he would excavate key sites in the north, where 53 percent of the area remains under full Israeli control.

Thousands of displaced people camped out in Gaza City, blocking the road to the ancient Greek port of Anseton.

“We are unable to assess the full extent of the internal damage,” Mr O’Toole continued. “No work can be done there at the moment.”

Washington says it expects progress soon on the next phase of the ceasefire in Gaza – dealing with the thorny issues of post-Hamas governance, security and reconstruction.

While Gazans believe there remains huge uncertainty about the future, many see work at the iconic heritage site starting to be seen as a small sign of hope.

Torrow Hassoneemy and Malgs’ Hedickal reporting