The groundbreaking work of Arab archaeologists in Israel

Amani Abu Hamid, an excavator and researcher in the Northern District

Nir Hasson reports in Haaretz on 20 October 2022:

Walid Atrash remembers the day Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir came to inaugurate Beit She’an National Park. “We were two Arab archaeologists. The project head came to us and said, ‘tomorrow you have a free day, don’t come,’” he says.

Atrash was a young archaeologist at the time, working alongside Gabi Mazor in the expedition uncovering ancient Beit She’an. When Mazor found out about the decision to shut his Arab assistants out of the premier’s visit, Atrash says, “he called the project manager and told him that if he didn’t apologize and invite us too, he should look for somebody else to guide the prime minister.

“The project manager said, ‘let’s talk privately.’ Mazor would not. They tried to say that the Shin Bet wouldn’t have time to investigate my past. In the end, we stayed. From then on I understood that politics only ruins things, especially if irresponsible people are in charge of things.

Atrash, 61, was one of the first Arab archaeologists in Israel, but he and some of his colleagues were the exceptions that proved the rule. The rule was that Arab society viewed Israeli archaeology with a mixture of alienation and suspicion. And so for many years, Arab archaeologists had to face challenges on two fronts.

One came from Jewish colleagues, workers and critics who have trouble accepting their contribution to research; the other from Arab friends and family who criticized their involvement in the field. The Arab scholars who have chosen to work in the field despite the problems are now leading efforts to spread awareness of archaeology in Arab society, efforts that have encountered major obstacles, especially in the academic world.

Suspicions in the Arab community about archaeology appear to have been well earned. Beginning in the 19th century, archaeology in the Middle East was an imperialistic and colonial pursuit, perceived as part of the European takeover of the region. When the Jewish community in pre-state Israel began to deal with archaeology, it continued with this tradition and added a clear national goal: finding evidence of its right to the land.

“Back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Jewish society in the country used archaeology to build Jewish identity,” says Hayah Katz of Kinneret Academic College, author of a research paper on the attitudes of religious Jewish society and Arab society to archaeology. “Palestinian society, whose nationalism was also formed in those years, did not use archaeology.”

The desire to reinforce national identity led scholars to deal with the “Jewish” strata of archaeological sites – mostly those in which remains from the Bronze Age and the Iron Age were found, periods identified with the biblical era, and the period of the Second Temple and the Mishna.

But an objective look at archaeological sites in Israel shows that almost every site also has remnants of the Islamic periods. It is often argued that Israeli archaeologists ignore these strata on their way to more ancient.

Moreover, there are far fewer experts in the Islamic periods compared to other periods at Israeli universities. “Today there is the Antiquities Law, which requires excavation and documentation of all the strata,” says Prof. Katia Cytryn-Silverman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who specializes in Islamic archaeology. “It would be very difficult for things that happened in the past to happen today.

“But can I promise you that all of my colleagues who are not in the Islamic field study these strata the way they should?” she continues. “I can’t promise that. I wouldn’t be allowed to excavate a biblical site, but with Muslim strata like these, supposedly anyone can [do it]. Islamic archaeology is still like a stepsister in Israel,” she says.

Kamil Sari, director of the Israel Antiquity Authority’s Northern District.

Arab archaeologists say that most of the Arab community has little interest in the field because it had no need to seek its roots in ancient mounds and sites. “Arab society didn’t think it was necessary to study archaeology,’’ says Kamil Sari, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Northern District. “The line of thinking is, ‘Why do I need to look for my ancient roots to prove anything to anyone?

“From the point of view of the Arabs, our right to the land is clear and visible,” he says. “I go to my grandmother’s house and I see the utensils and the clothing. I don’t need more than this; the Jewish community is an immigrant community that has to dig inside.”

Another obstacle that denied Arabs access to the field when it was in its infancy, during the final years of Ottoman rule and the beginning of the British Mandate in Palestine, was the lack of opportunity to study archaeology professionally.

Jews who established the study of archaeology in Palestine traveled to universities in Europe to study the subject. Upon their return, they founded the archaeology department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which became the center of Israeli archeology.

Even earlier, in 1913, the Jewish community had established the Israel Exploration Society (originally the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society) for the study of the country and its antiquities, an answer to the British Palestine Exploration Fund.

Although a handful of Palestinian residents joined the British archaeological work, their ability to study the profession and establish a parallel field of study was limited. After the Nakba and the establishment of the State of Israel, the situation of Israel’s Arab minority prevented any further progress.

“In the years following the founding of the state, the Arab community in Israel lived under a military regime and in financial distress. Only very few of them could study in academia, and they preferred to study practical things – medicine and law,” says Katz.

“There was no education and no money,” says Sari. “Anyone who wanted to send his child to study preferred that he become a doctor or an engineer. Nobody was interested in heritage and preservation.” Another problem was that in the eyes of the Arab community, archaeological oversight at construction sites looked like additional government harassment of Arabs.

The change began in the 1980s, when an increasing number of Arabs began to register for university studies and a handful went to the archaeology departments. Most of them took archaeology as a minor rather than a major. They all attest that their family and friends were critical of their choice.

“At the high school graduation festivities my uncle asked, ‘What are you going to study?’ When I replied that I was interested in archaeology, he told me, ‘Forget that nonsense, now talk seriously,’” says Sari.

“I said to him, come on.’ He explained why I shouldn’t do it. A. There’s no money in it, and my father wasn’t a millionaire. B. ‘You’re going to study archaeology in order to say that the Jews really should get everything in this country and we have nothing here?’ That was the perception – archaeology was identified with the Zionist movement. But things change.”

Fortunately for the first generation of Arab archaeologists in Israel, the early ‘90s brought two developments which significantly influenced the field: In 1990, the Israel Antiquities Authority was established, replacing the Antiquities Department that had operated as a small department within the Education Ministry. This coincided with a construction boom all over the country thanks to the need to house the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Rabia Hamisa at Mi’ilya

Archaeological remains were discovered at many construction sites, and there was great demand for archaeologists to supervise rescue excavations – digs conducted in advance of construction or development. Many of the students who completed their bachelor’s degree in archaeology at the time were hired by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Some of them advanced to senior positions.

Radwan Badihi is another archaeologist who took an unusual path. “Archaeology had an image of a profession that didn’t belong to Arabs, because it was designed to prove the Jews’ connection to the land,” he says. “I didn’t believe in that stereotype and said that I wanted to be a pioneer in Arab society. They thought I was crazy and told me that there was no future in it.”

When Badihi was about to conclude his bachelor’s degree, he was convinced that his future did not lie in archaeology. But the late Prof. Yoram Tsafrir told him he should stay. “And in fact, that same evening I got a phone call from Yosef Porat, who was in charge of the excavations in Caesarea,” he recalls. “I started to work there and the world opened up to me.”

Badihi rose up to the rank of the antiquity authority’s district director. He also studied law and became the authority’s legal adviser. He served in the position for 11 years, and in 2018 won the election for head of the Kafr Kara Regional Council, where he remains.

As a legal adviser, he was sometimes forced to defend the authority on political issues, and to represent opinions that did not always conform with his views. He had to explain, for example, why the excavations in Jerusalem’s “City of David” site were handed over to the right-wing Elad NGO, or to defend the digging up of Muslim graves in the compound of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem. In those instances, he preferred to transfer the handling of the cases to an external law firm.

The leadership of the antiquities authority supported his decision to have the sensitive cases taken out of his hands. “There were things that I found difficult to deal with for reasons of conscience. Shuka Dorfman [the former director of the authority, who died in 2014] was understanding and I received an exemption,” says Badihi.

Other Arabs progressed alongside Badihi at the authority. Sari is today the director of the northern district, Atrash is a senior researcher, and Hamoudi Khalaily is one of its most important scholars specializing in the prehistoric period. There are also Amani Abu Hamid, an excavator and researcher in the Northern District, and other Arab archaeologists at the authority.

Nevertheless, Arab archaeologists are a rare phenomenon. Arab women involved in archaeology are even rarer. Abu Hamid, a resident of Acre, was a pioneer in this respect. She began to study at the University of Haifa in 1992. “I was always intrigued by the buildings in Acre. I wanted to understand what I was seeing and it started from there,” she says.

“After Acre was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, research and preservation projects began and I started working at the IAA. It wasn’t easy for me, as a woman, to manage a group of men, and I was also younger than them. Some said that they weren’t willing to have me tell them what to do, but in the end they always accepted me.”

Walid Atrash at Beit She’an National Park

In light of the Arabs’ success in the antiquities authority, the absence of Arab scholars in the university archaeology departments is blatant. In all the Israeli universities’ archaeology departments there are over 50 tenured scholars, only one is an Arab – Rabia Hamisa of the University of Haifa. He is the first Arab to receive tenure in one of the archaeology departments since the establishment of the state.

Another archaeologist. Tawfik Da’adli, has a position in the Art History Department and in the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Department at the Hebrew University. Recently, he was also accepted as a member of the Young Academy, which is part of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Hamisa lives in the Christian village of Mi’ilya in the Lower Galilee. The village is an anomaly when it comes to archaeology and Arab society. “I think it’s a world record – in a village of 3,000 people, there are 11 archaeologists,” he says. This has to do with the local patriotism of the residents of Mi’ilya and to their connection with the land, he says.  “Everyone here wants to know the history, everyone puts work into the land, even though it no longer brings in money,” says Hamisa. He specialized in Crusader architecture in the Galilee and received a position at the University of Haifa in 2015.

A look at Arab archaeologists’ specializations makes it evident that they stay away from the most sensitive periods in terms of the Jewish political narrative. Most prefer to focus on the Muslim periods. As speakers of Arabic, they have an advantage in researching these time periods, as the historical documents are more accessible to them.

Others focus on the classical Hellenistic and Roman periods. For the most part, they refrain from dealing with clearly Jewish findings from those periods. Others go all the way back to prehistory. There are no Arab scholars among researchers of the biblical periods – the Iron and Bronze Ages.

Four years ago, Atrash and several other partners in the antiquities authority decided to try to change the perception of archaeology in Arab society. “The perception in the community is that archaeologists plant things in order to prove the politics,” he says. “You walk around the Galilee and all you see is synagogues. That’s why there was a lot of antagonism in the Arab community.

“Add to that the Antiquities Authority Law, which requires anyone who builds to receive permits. That led to alienation. We took it upon ourselves to publish a journal about archaeology for the Arab community.” That was the origin of the Arabic-language journal Cornerstone, which is published twice a year and includes short articles about archaeology in Israel.

Atrash says the editors of the journal do not avoid sensitive subjects. The journals include articles about Jewish ritual baths, the reconstruction of the royal colonnade building on the Temple Mount during the Second Temple period, and the mosaic in the synagogue in Kibbutz Hukok. There is also an article about the village of Lifta on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which was abandoned during the Nakba. “As long as we’re truthful and speak directly, we are respected,” says Atrash.

Recently, another project was completed – a book by Sari about the archaeological sites in the Arab villages of the Galilee. The next project will probably be the most sensitive of all – a book in Arabic about the archaeology of Jerusalem, which is soon to be published.  According to the archaeologists, writing in Arabic about the field is rare even in the Arab world, as except for short popular articles, the scientific writing is in English. Cornerstone appears to be the only archaeological journal in the world published in Arabic.

The Ben-Zvi Institute, a research institute founded by former Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, recently awarded a prize to Atrash “for the founding of the journal and its editing and contribution to sharing archaeological research from Israel among the Arab public.”

“One million and 250,000 years ago, human beings began to come here from Africa,” says Atrash. “And since then, nations rise, are replaced and change. Nobody has a kushan (a deed to the land) to this place. Archaeology and history don’t deal with beliefs but with findings, and what we are discovering in the ground isn’t there to prove a story or to disprove someone else’s story. The land belongs to those who live in it.”

This article is reproduced in its entirety