Israeli 'antiquities looting' exposes wider West Bank annexation

An Israeli police officer and settler has entered an archaeological site in the Palestinian-controlled Area A of the occupied West Bank and removed antiquities from Palestinian-administered areas, in what experts have told The New Arab is part of a wider Israeli effort to use archaeology to seize control of Palestinian land and heritage.

Meir Rotter, an Israeli police officer and amateur archaeologist, entered a burial cave in Area A accompanied by Israeli soldiers, according to Haaretz, despite archaeological authority in the area resting with the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords.

Rotter has previously been accused of removing an archaeological artefact from the Palestinian village of Kafr Dhaba in March.

Alon Arad, executive director of Israeli archaeology and heritage organisation Emek Shaveh, told The New Arab that the removal of antiquities should be understood as part of a broader campaign in which archaeology is being used to strengthen Israeli control over the occupied West Bank.

“This is part of the greater trend of weaponising heritage and archaeological sites in order to cement the Israeli grip over the West Bank, whether through official annexation or de facto annexation,” Arad said.

He said Rotter’s case was unusual because the police officer appeared to be operating independently of the Israeli authorities responsible for antiquities in the occupied territory.

“The case of Meir Rotter is unique in the sense that he's operating without any authorisation. He's doing it on his own,” Arad said.

Antiquities removed from Palestinian areas

Rotter is also a settler living in the occupied West Bank, according to Arad, although his role in the Israeli police is unrelated to archaeology in the territory.

“He's just going into Area A or Area B, doing whatever he wants, and then the authorities are not even investigating it,” he said.

Under the 1995 Oslo II agreement, responsibility for civil affairs, including archaeology and antiquities, in Areas A and B was transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

Israel’s Civil Administration retained authority over such matters in Area C.

Arad said Israel’s obligations as an occupying power to safeguard cultural property did not give Israeli authorities or individuals the right to remove antiquities from Palestinian-administered areas or conduct archaeological activity there independently.

“When Meir Rotter takes materials from Area A to Area C, that's a violation,” he said. “That's a violation of both international law and the Oslo Agreement.”

The removal of artefacts from Palestinian territory is therefore not simply a dispute over who controls archaeological sites. Arad said archaeology is increasingly being used as a tool to take physical possession of land while reinforcing an Israeli historical claim to it.

Archaeology and annexation

Rotter’s activities come as the Israeli government has taken steps to expand its authority over archaeological and heritage sites beyond Area C.

In 2024, the Israeli cabinet authorised the Civil Administration to take enforcement action at antiquities sites in Area B, despite Palestinian responsibility for archaeology there under the Oslo agreements.

The government went further in February this year, approving enforcement measures at archaeological sites in Area A.

A separate bill progressing through the Knesset would establish a civilian heritage authority under Israel’s Heritage Ministry to assume powers over archaeology and antiquities currently exercised by the military-run Civil Administration.

Critics say transferring those powers to a civilian Israeli government body would amount to extending Israeli governance directly into occupied territory and further advancing de facto annexation.

The moves have increasingly focused attention on archaeological sites including Sebastia, Mount Ebal and, more recently, Solomon’s Pools near Bethlehem, where Israeli politicians and settler groups have pushed for greater Israeli control.

Arad said archaeology provides both a physical mechanism for asserting control over territory and an ideological justification for doing so.

“Archaeological sites are first and foremost land,” he said.

By emphasising Jewish remains while marginalising other periods of the region’s history, Arad said archaeological sites can also be used to promote the idea that the occupied West Bank is “exclusively Jewish land”.

“It works both on the public narrative, but also in the field as a way to expropriate land and limit Palestinian development,” he said.

Whose heritage?

The cave entered by Rotter reportedly contains Jewish graves dating from the Roman period, the kind of ancient Jewish heritage that has increasingly been invoked by Israeli officials and settler groups to assert claims over archaeological sites in the occupied West Bank.

Arad rejected the argument that ancient cultural or religious connections to an archaeological site can confer modern territorial rights.

“We don't set up borders based on the cultural affiliation of archaeological sites,” he said. “If we start doing so, we dismantle the entire world order on how we determine borders.”

He compared such a claim to modern Italy asserting sovereignty over parts of Britain because they once formed part of the Roman Empire.

Arad stressed that Jewish history in the occupied West Bank was undeniable, but said it represented one part of a much longer and more diverse human history that also includes Palestinians as the natives of the land.

But archaeology, he argued, is increasingly being deployed by Israel’s religious right to construct a physical and historical map in which Palestinian connections to the land are diminished while Jewish connections are emphasised.

“We have 1.5 million years of human presence in Israel and Palestine,” Arad said. “We have lots of stories, and the attempt to tell only one story about this land is destructive.”