Cop, IDF troops enter West Bank village under PA control to seize ancient artifact |
A police officer entered a Palestinian village in Area A of the West Bank with IDF soldiers and unlawfully seized an archaeological artifact, according to a Tuesday report that was confirmed to The Times of Israel by an IDF spokesperson.
The officer, Meir Rotter, is an amateur archaeologist and was friends with Ze’ev Erlich, who died in November 2024 in a Hezbollah attack in southern Lebanon with Sgt. Gur Kehati. Erlich was allowed to enter the western sector of southern Lebanon, in IDF uniform, to examine an archaeological site without the necessary approvals by Col. (res.) Yoav Yarom, who was removed from service in December and received a severe command reprimand as a result of the incident.
In a video shared by Haaretz, Rotter said it was Erlich who had spotted a stone engraved with a menorah embedded in a building in Kafr Dhaba, east of Tulkarm, during a tour he conducted in the village in 2017 (it was not clear whether he did so as part of the military or as a civilian, which would be illegal under Israeli law).
“A few years ago, Jabo [Erlich] visited and saw a repurposed stone,” Rotter said, apparently addressing the soldiers, and aware that he was being filmed. “It has a decoration of a menorah, which was familiar to us from other places. We find Samaritan menorahs in Jitt, Kafr Qaddum, Hajjah… Here too, in Kafr Dhaba, we find a lintel with a menorah.”
“After our visit, the residents realize that there is something here that might be worth money, worth gold,” he added. “I don’t know what it is worth. They dismantle the lintel and the lintel is waiting, apparently to be sold to antiquity robbers. In a search of the village, we found the stone thrown in one of the courtyards, and we will save it. This is a matter of heritage; we are returning a lost object to its owner.”
Under the Oslo Accords,........