The Israeli occupation destroyed the central archive of Gaza
municipality containing thousands of documents, many more than a hundred
years old [photo credit: Birzeit University]
The MESA statement notes that among the many cultural sites destroyed
or severely damaged are over three hundred mosques and four churches
some amongst the oldest in the world. Ten museums have been destroyed
together with nineteen cultural centres, five public libraries and
archives, four universities and their libraries, six publishing houses
and three media and artistic production companies.
Traditional markets have been razed to the ground, archaeological
sites, including the Roman necropolis (Ard al-Moharbeen) in northern
Gaza despoiled and cemeteries desecrated.
Among those cemeteries are two under the authority of the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) one in Gaza City and the other
in Zuwaidah.
Arab Digest asked the CWGC for information on the cemeteries and the
fate of its employees maintaining them. We were referred to a statement
issued on 9 May which announced that all its workers and their
immediate families had been safely removed to Egypt. The statement
added:
We are aware that both cemeteries have suffered damage, but the
extent is currently unknown. We will, however, restore those sites to a
befitting standard as and when circumstances allow.
MESA notes that the cultural destruction ongoing in Gaza violates
Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibiting the destruction
of property by an Occupying Power; the 1954 Hague Convention for the
Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, ratified
by Israel; Article 6 of the 1972 International Convention for the
Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage; the ICRC’s Rule 38 on
customary rules of international law (IHL) which states that parties to
a conflict “must respect cultural property.”
Embedded in the MESA statement is a paragraph that deserves to be quoted in full:
The current multipronged attacks against Gaza appear calculated
to achieve nothing less than the total erasure of the Palestinians and
their history from this small coastal strip. Horrendous in its nature
and scope, this war is also just the most recent, if also most deadly,
episode of a hundred-year-long policy, actively abetted and openly
supported by the United States, along with a succession of other Western
powers, to facilitate the expulsion of the Palestinians from their
homeland, erase their material and cultural claims to it and by
extension their historical memory, and indeed deny their existence as a
people. In short, Israel is engaging in cultural genocide against the
Palestinian people with the active support of its American and European
allies.
A question then to our governments (and governments in waiting). Does
your unwavering support for Israel include cultural genocide? Or is
that a red line too far?
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