New West Bank antiquity bill seeks to extend Israeli authority over Areas A and B |
A new version of a bill whose purpose is to extend Israeli authority over antiquities and heritage sites in the West Bank, aims to include Areas A and B — where the Palestinian Authority has civilian control — under the scope of its applicability, according to the latest draft uploaded to the Knesset website on Wednesday ahead of a meeting of the Education and Culture Committee to discuss it.
The draft includes dozens of notes highlighting items that still need to be decided or clarified before the bill is brought to the committee vote.
One of the comments states that the bill’s primary sponsor, Likud MK Amit Halevi, has requested that the new law be applied also to the Gaza Strip.
The original version of the bill, first introduced in 2023, proposed that the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the body responsible for overseeing archaeology and archaeological sites in Israel’s sovereign territory, oversee antiquities in the West Bank.
From the outset, the proposal has faced backlash from nearly every professional archaeologist, many of whom accused the coalition of seeking to approve a de facto annexation in the field of antiquities. The IAA itself opposed the move, and the bill has now been rewritten to establish a new Israeli civilian body for this purpose.
Under the Oslo Accords, Israel’s involvement in West Bank antiquities is only supposed to extend to Area C, the 60% of the West Bank where it maintains civil and military control, while Area A and B are under the civilian control of the Palestinian Authority (in the case of Area A, the PA also........