US and the 'Palestinian heritage'

"Could it be that the US is involved in stealing away some other people's cultural heritage?"


Yisrael Medad
Greenlined
16 June '10

This past week, I was informed that the Ambassadors Fund, a PACE partner, is engaged in training Arabs "to protect Palestinian heritage in West Bank".

It seems that in 1996, a group of Arabs decided to dedicate themselves to preserving a "Palestinian" cultural heritage. They formed the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE). It is engaged in more than 20 projects of heritage highlighting.

For its latest project, PACE has partnered with the US State Department's Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation to preserve and protect cultural antiquities in three West Bank villages: Aboud, Al-Jib and Beitin.

The Preservation and Protection of Palestinian Cultural Heritage in Rural Areas project aims, in part, to raise awareness among the residents of the three villages about the relevance of protecting, preserving and presenting the historic areas.

Along with natural deterioration of ancient sites, illegal digging and sale of antiquities is a widespread phenomenon in the West Bank as a whole [note: that last bit about thievery refers to Arabs, mainly. Remember how we had to buy back the stolen Dead Sea Scrolls?]. In particular, the three villages in the project have been targeted because of their rich cultural resources. Among these are ancient dwellings currently occupied by residents. Aboud is a Roman-Byzantine site, while villages Al-Jib and Beitin have been continuously settled from the Bronze Age forward and contain biblical sites [note: the wording "biblical sites", not "Jewish", "Hebrew" or "Israelite"].

In addition to the project's goal of raising awareness among the local population, two other aims focus on heritage protection training and generating jobs through training and support for traditional crafts.

To achieve these goals, PACE is coordinating an education program that utilizes classes, on-site training and workshops. Classroom discussions focus on what constitutes heritage and how to present it to the public, how to assess local and socioeconomic conditions to determine the future of cultural resources and how to effectively communicate the values and history of cultural property.

Could it be that the US is involved in stealing away some other people's cultural heritage?

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