Unfortunately, the "Israeli-Palestinian Cultural Heritage Agreement" announced last week in Jerusalem has not quite lived up to the great challenge it set for itself.Background here.
The brainchild of two U.S.-based archaeologists, Ran Boytner of UCLA and Lynn Swartz Dodd of the University of Southern California, this initiative brought together three Israeli and three Palestinian archaeologists to formulate a set of recommendations about the equitable division of disputed objects and sites, as part of a comprehensive political final-status agreement. The idealism and dedication of this binational group should not be dismissed lightly. But their final text disappointingly concentrates on the physical control of sites and the repatriation of relics, without seriously confronting the core issues: bridging the enormous differences in attitudes toward archaeology between Israelis and Palestinians, and addressing the utter lack of a sense of shared archaeological heritage.
Regrettably, the agreement's principles cling stubbornly to old-fashioned concepts of territory, sovereignty and exclusive possession of cultural property that dramatically reduce the possibility of ever seeing archaeology as anything more than a zero-sum game. ...
Cutting the baby in two? Will both would-be parents agree with this archaeological variation of the famous Solomonic judgment simply because it seems fair? ...
UPDATE: But according to Science Magazine the proposal is getting a more positive response elsewhere:
About 50 Israeli archaeologists, including IAA officials, showed up on 8 April in Jerusalem to hear the U.S. and Israeli part of the team make their case, says Boytner. (No Palestinians attended.) Ilan was prepared for the worst but says "surprisingly, the overwhelming response was positive and congratulatory. Not a single person spoke against the document." The consensus was that "this process should continue," says audience member Hanan Eshel of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. The buzz at the meeting was that the team's anonymous Israeli member is an IAA archaeologist. "We will not comment," says Boytner.UPDATE (19 April): Dead link fixed. Sorry about that.
A follow-up meeting is being planned for the Israeli side. Among Palestinians, there is broad support but also those who "do not want to involve Israel whatsoever in a future Palestinian state," says team member Ghattas Sayej, an archaeologist with the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange in Ramallah, the West Bank. The effort to convince Palestinian archaeologists to formally ratify the plan is being led by team member Nazmi el-Jubeh, co-director of RIWAQ, an architectural conservation organization in Ramallah.
