Photo: GOAM f
ROM GAZA TO PALMYRA, local experts and civil society work tirelessly to safeguard the Arab World’ s heritage under threat of war and looting. In January 2025, after a long-awaited truce between Israel and Hamas, one of Gaza’ s most recognized archaeologists, Fadel Al-Utol, travelled more than 20km from his place of displacement to reach his home in Gaza City. Despite the exhausting journey, he stopped at key historic sites. Since the war began in October 2023, reports of extensive heritage damage had reached him only through images, a reality that deeply disturbed him. His first stop was the ruins of the fourth-century Saint Hilarion Monastery- one of the oldest and largest surviving monasteries in the Middle East. So significant was the site that it was added to UNESCO’ s World Heritage List in July 2024, even as war raged. Al-Utol, deeply familiar with the monastery, was relieved to find only minor damage.“ It was one of the best in terms of condition. Some of the protective panels had been blown off due to the intensity of the nearby bombing,” he explains.
He then visited the archaeological site Tell es-Sakan, fourth to third millennia BC settlements, and the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem’ s storage- Gaza’ s main archaeological storage facility, which housed 30-years of finds. When he finally reached his home in the evening, he was devastated to find it destroyed. Despite his loss, he remained in the City for several days to carry out assessments.“ I had to force myself to stay strong and endure life there, so that I could document everything,” he says.“ I wanted to show the world the extent of the deliberate destruction,” Al-Utol adds. He meticulously photographed and filmed his findings, which he says were widespread damage and destruction caused by airstrikes, tank fire, and bulldozers.“ I was deeply, deeply saddened,” he says.
His assessments echo UNESCO findings, which by August 2025, had verified damage to 110 sites. An Independent UN International Commission of Inquiry reported in September 2025,“ the systematic and widespread attack on religious, cultural, and educational sites throughout Gaza” had caused extensive, sometimes irreversible damage. Al-Utol’ s determination to document Gaza’ s losses reflects a wider struggle across the Arab world, where cultural heritage has long been both a casualty and a target of war. From Yemen’ s Old Cities of Sanaa and Ta’ izz, to the deliberate destruction of Syria’ s Palmyra temples by ISIS, the 2003 looting of Iraq Museum after the US invasion, and the widespread illicit excavations across the region, the toll on cultural memory is staggering. Motives vary, but the result is the same: museums, monuments, and archives are damaged or reduced to rubble, and irreplaceable artefacts are stolen.
Yemen, Imam Palace. World Monuments Fund trains local custodians to protect heritage. In Yemen ' s Ta ' izz Museum complex, WMF-trained professionals completed conservation of the 19th-century Ottoman Imam Palace in 2021.
HISTORY OF EXPLOITATION AND LOOTING
“ To understand why cultural heritage in the Arab world remains so vulnerable today, you first have to look at its history,” says Marc-André Haldimann, Associate Researcher in the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces at the University of Bern and archaeology expert for the Swiss Confederation. Haldimann, who has worked extensively in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, emphasizes that the patterns of exploitation today are deeply rooted in centuries of European collecting. From the 18th century, antiquities were prized not only as cultural treasures but also as tools of diplomacy and prestige, often presented by ambassadors to heads of state. He says, this escalated in the 19th century after Napoleon Bonaparte’ s campaign in Egypt( 1798-1801), launched before he became Emperor of France. Victorious armies returned home with large quantities of antiquities, many placed in newly established national museums as European powers raced to acquire artefacts from what was then the Ottoman Empire- much of the modern Middle East. Crucially, provenance enhanced both the value of the artefacts and the prestige of the nations that possessed them.
Haldimann notes this endured until the Nazi era of the 20th century, when collecting became entangled with dispossession as Jewish families and occupied territories were stripped of their treasures. After World War II, antiquities remained highly sought, but provenance was obscured, reflecting looting and clandestine excavations. This tension culminated in the 1970 UNESCO Convention, which established international legal protections for heritage and curbed illicit trade.
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