The loss of Gaza's heritage is a blow, but Palestinians know how to endure

Palestinians pray in the courtyard of Gaza City's historic Al Omari Mosque, which was heavily damaged in Israeli bombardment. Universities, libraries and archives have also been destroyed or damaged iShow more

Alongside war’s horrific human cost, conflicts throughout history have also been marked by what some researchers call “culturecide” – the systematic erasure of a people’s history and heritage.

In the Middle East, examples of this stretch back as far as 70 AD when, during the sack of Jerusalem by Roman legionnaires under the future emperor Titus, the city’s Jewish temple was looted and destroyed.

Two millennia later, places of worship and of cultural heritage like the Al Nuri Mosque and Palmyra’s ruins, were attacked and desecrated by ISIS during the radicals’ murderous rampage across much of Iraq and Syria. In both cases, as in many other examples from this region and beyond, the intention was to displace and demoralise entire populations by breaking their cultural connections to the land.

This week, The National has reported from Gaza on the significant destruction of cultural sites, libraries and legal repositories meted out during Israeli forces’ nine-month war in the ruined territory. According to the Palestinian writer and historian Hossam Abu Nasser, more than 70 per cent of archives in Gaza have been lost. “The number of libraries destroyed in the current war is estimated to be more than 87 public libraries, which housed extremely important books and documents,” he added. “Among them is the Palestinian Planning Centre, which contains over 60,000 titles, not including other documents and archives.”

In addition to the devastating human toll, the cultural ruination and the loss of legal and historical documents is a particular blow. Mr Abu Nasser accused Israeli forces of trying to steal archives related to land registries “in an attempt to prevent Palestinians from proving their ownership of their lands and properties”. Although a deliberate Israeli policy of targeting Gaza’s cultural wealth has yet to be proved, the effect of the destruction is in effect the same: to weaken Palestinians’ connection to the land by erasing historical evidence of property ownership while simultaneously impoverishing and brutalising their culture.

But, just as Palestinian society retained its identity and distinctiveness in the decades after the Nakba of 1948, the Palestinians of 2024 have a sharp and sophisticated awareness of their national history and their place on the land. This has been supported by efforts over the years to digitise Palestinian cultural, historical and legal archives, thereby freeing them from the possibility of theft or destruction.

There are many such projects under way. In 2018, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive was launched to document more than 200 years of Palestinian society in what it called a “culture of safekeeping and digital archiving”. So far it has collected more than 200,000 digitised items. Five years before, UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees started a digital archive of more than half a million items to chronicle the lives of the displaced from 1948 to the present day.

Other nations scarred by conflict and cultural vandalism are also working to try and restore what was damaged. In Syria, the UN’s Emergency Safeguarding of the Syrian Cultural Heritage project is still working to mitigate the war’s toll on ancient mosques, souks and heritage sites, such as Palmyra. In Iraq, the UAE has been a long-term partner of the Spirit of Mosul project that aims to restore Al Nuri Mosque complex – which dates to the 12th century – and the nearby Al Saa’a Clock Church and Al Tahera Church. In Timbuktu, Mali, damage done to several historical mausoleums was one of first cases where destruction of heritage was prosecuted as crime of war; according to Unesco, the sites were reconstructed using traditional knowledge systems as part of an international co-operation campaign.

In Gaza, the work to preserve legal and personal documents deserves the backing of all those who support Palestinian national rights. In such extreme cases, saving cultural heritage is not a luxury – it is a vital effort to maintain the validity of Palestinians’ legal, moral and political claims to their own land. It is also about preserving national memory that in times of extreme hardship, such as now, is sometimes the only thing people have left.