by Shimon Samuels and Alex Uberti

As we had forewarned, the 48th Session of the World Heritage Committee (being held in Busan, South Korea from 19 to 29 July) is the occasion for the Palestinian Authority to claim yet another piece of heritage that is hardly part of its identity, the Sebaste/Samaria archaeological site.

See: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-sebaste-samaria-a-new-site-of-heritage-warfare/

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an NGO based in France with national offices worldwide, has filed a report, which partly falls into the biased narrative of the Palestinian Authority, while providing recommendations that are a proper challenge to reality.

From its incipit, the ICOMOS report indicates the “Location” of the site as within the “Nablus Governorate, State of Palestine”. Only in the following “Background” paragraph, it ambiguously affirms the site is “not under the control of the State Party” (i.e. the Palestinian Authority). In practice, it hints but omits to clarify that, since it is in «Area C», the archaeological site is under exclusive Israeli civil and military control and responsibility (a status quo dating back to the 1993 Oslo Accords).

In its “Brief description”, the report mentions “different civilizations from at least the 9th century BCE through the Hellenistic, Byzantine and Roman periods… Crusader era… Ayyubid/Mamluk and Ottoman periods”, evoking nearly all civilizations that have stepped through the region, but omitting the very first historical record of “Shomron/Samaria” as the capital of the ancient Northern Kingdom of Israel,........

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