Palestinian given 18 months in prison for destroying West Bank antiquities site

In what appears to be a first, an Israeli military court has handed out a jail sentence to Jafar Muhammad Ali Ziad, a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, for destroying antiquities in his town of Umm ar-Rehan.

In a “precedent-setting ruling,” Ziad was sentenced to 18 months in prison, plus 12 months suspended, and fined 65,000 NIS ($18,000) for “destroying and vandalizing” an antiquities site, the Israel Hayom daily reported Wednesday.

Umm ar-Rehan, in the northern West Bank, falls under Area C in the system set up during the Oslo Accords, where Israel has military and civilian control, while the Palestinian Authority provides medical and educational services.

The village area was inhabited in antiquity and contains remains from the Hellenistic, Roman and Persian periods. The area was abandoned during the 3rd century CE before being repopulated at a later date, according to archaeologists.

The report said Ziad was found guilty of carrying out “illegal work… using heavy tools and mechanical equipment” that destroyed “valuable historical remains from the Byzantine period” between September 2023 and March 2024, despite warnings to cease activity.

In March, dozens of Palestinians were reported arrested after turning an antiquities site in Umm ar-Rehan into a parking lot.

The sentence is “a new punishment benchmark and reflects the great severity we attribute to damage to our cultural and historical assets,” Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said in a statement that also asserted the Umm ar-Rehan site was connected to Second Temple-era Jewish communities.

Shomrim Al Hanetzach (Protectors of Eternity), an activist organization that aims to protect Jewish archaeological sites in the West Bank, applauded the ruling, saying it heralded “a new era” that “will fundamentally change the behavior of enforcement agencies and the legal system against the vandals of heritage sites in Judea and Samaria,” using the Biblical name for the West Bank.

The issue of antiquities in the West Bank is complex, with their preservation technically under the aegis of a specialized department of the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration, which oversees civilian affairs in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority also has a government department set up to preserve antiquities in the areas it directly administers, Areas A and B, which constitute some 40% of the West Bank.

However, Jewish activists have long reported that illegal building and looting threaten historical sites throughout the West Bank. A proposal to transfer authority over West Bank antiquities to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which currently oversees antiquities only in Israel proper, was discussed this week in a Knesset committee meeting.

The Civil Administration did not respond to a Times of Israel request for further details on the matter.