"People to People
Exchange Program"
Since 2001, two teams of scholars and scientists,
one based in Israel, the other in the Palestinian
territories, have worked on a cooperative
project to preserve historical sites that
are important to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian
religions.
The project, called the People to People
Exchange Program, was funded by a $400,000
Department of State grant as an outgrowth
of the U.S.-brokered Wye
River Accords, signed
by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at
the Wye River Plantation in Maryland in 1998.
The Israeli team, from the Zinman Institute
of Archaelogy at the University
of Haifa,
focuses on the historic and religious structures
in Akko, northern Israel, one of the world's
oldest continuously inhabited cities. The
Israeli team is led by Ann E. Killebrew of
Haifa University. She is assisted by Mina
Evron, head of the Zinman Institute and Wye
Project co-coordinator. Participants
on the Israeli team include Israeli Jews,
Israeli Muslims, Israeli Christians, Germans
and other Europeans, and Americans.
The Palestinian Association for Cultural
Exchange (PACE) teamfocuses on heritage initiatives
in two important biblical sites in the West
Bank: Beitin (old Bethel) and el Jib (old
Gibeon). Team leader Adel Yahyeh, an
archaeologist and PACE’s director,
said, “Both were in a fragile state,
threatened by roiling political currents
and largely neglected.”
Rehabilitation was achieved “in close
cooperation with the people of the two villages,” he
said. The Palestinian cadre also was
a diverse group, with Germans, Italian-Americans,
and various university grad students and
interns.
For three years, the Wye teams’ mission
was to (1) clean, clear, and as much as possible
restore or rehabilitate antiquated structures
in ancient towns; (2) secure sites from petty
thievery and vandalism, crimes that have
diluted the sites’ value and discouraged
tourism; and (3) educate local populations
about the work. Arab Muslims, Arab
Christians and Israelis alike were encouraged
to embrace the idea of heritage, preservation
and shared traditions. In Israel, especially,
the idea of guarding against bulldozing the
past was stressed.
Here are some of Wye’s many hard-won
accomplishments:
At ancient el-Jib/Gibeon:
-- Cleaning, restoration, and terrace and
fence construction for wine cellars, olive
presses and pools.
-- Basic cleaning and preservation work at an important
Old Testament cistern.
-- Promoting traditional Palestinian weaving, ceramics,
stone cutting and other heritage-preservation activities.
At Akko:
-- Compiling major historical sources from
the year 2 B.C. to 1948 and digitizing British
Mandate Archives.
-- Organizing 20th century oral histories.
-- Starting or furthering work on dilapidated, poorly
restored or threatened structures built atop Crusader
remains at Serai (Hanna Abu Uqsa), in the Block 10
district, and at Beit Shukri.
Both Killebrew and Yahyeh said their teams
are convinced that preserving the Holy Land's
heritage requires close cooperation among
all concerned. But conflict and jurisdictional
disputes often dashed the teams’ hopes
of visiting each other’s areas. Yahyeh
said that joint efforts were limited to “conferences
and regular meetings here and abroad” to
attend workshops and present papers on the
challenges of preserving world-heritage sites
in wartime.
Determined to go forward, the teams used
e-mail and “exchanged ideas and presented
the outcome of our work on the three sites
to one other and to other scientists,” Yahyeh
said. Among the concrete achievements,
Killebrew said, was the English translation
and printing of a 300-page report of the
Wye heritage preservation activities.
Artifact looting was targeted by both teams
as threatening site preservation and detracting
from the economic potential of tourism, and,
consequently, efforts were made to encourage
communities to take responsibility for protecting
the sites.
Archaeologist Sandra Scham, a member of
the Israeli team and a close colleague of
both Yahyeh and Killebrew in the Wye project,said
some Palestinian sites were in “no
man’s land -- nobody was looking after
them.”
“Subsistence looting by people without
jobs has pretty much stopped,” she
said. She added that some of the State
Department funding has “gotten local
people involved in both preserving and guarding
the sites,” many legacy sites in the
region have been “cleaned up, kept
clean, and made more attractive.”
Killebrew said that trade in historical
artifacts takes place openly in Israel and
is driven by Western antiquities collectors
and fed by Israeli and sometimes Arab suppliers. Local
committees, however, are developing a stronger
sense of ownership over the sites where they
are living, she said. “It really is
up to the local people to protect the sites," she
said.
That is why overcoming “artificial
boundaries between people” was part
of the Wye community education workshops,
Killebrew said.
Can other regions profit from the Wye River
experience? Yes. Killebrew thinks that
in Israel, and increasingly in the Palestinian
areas, the idea is growing that “you
can’t just go in, excavate and walk
away from a site,” leaving open holes
and doing other, subtler forms of damage.
There’s a need for “more accountability
[by the archaeologist] to the site itself
and to the communities connected to these
sites.”
The Wye project leaders hope to keep its
promise alive. Joint workshops for
Palestinians and Israelis about their respective
work are planned in July at the University
of Haifa, under the co-sponsorship of the
Turkish and American embassies, to illuminate
the many shared-heritage communities. Akko
alone has 26.
In February, at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles, team leaders presented
prepublication papers summarizing the results
of their three years of shared-heritage work
and of community-education programs aimed
at involving local people in site-preservation
after the teams leave. The U.S. State Department
co-sponsored the conference.
The larger hope, expressed by Scham, is
that the work of Wye will inspire others
in the Middle East. “Colleagues of
ours have a U.S. Institute of Peace grant
for some meetings with Palestinians and Israelis,
to do research. We consulted with them on
their grant application. They’ll probably
ask us to attend the meetings. So the original
scope of Wye has expanded outside our own
group.” She added, “We’re
hoping that we get additional ECA grants
we’ve applied for, and support from
others like the Middle East Partnership Initiative
(a State Department program), so that we
can continue to work together.”
At stake are countless sites throughout
Israel and the Palestinian territories representing
the cultural and religious legacies of all
three monotheistic faiths.
“Investing in heritage preservation
is not about preserving the past but rather
investing in the future. That is why projects
like ours deserve international support.
They give hope to the people in a better
future for them and for their country,” Yahyeh
said.
Looking toward the future, Yahyeh is working
to strengthen the nascent Palestinian Antiquities
Authority and to create a Palestinian School
of Archeology. Mina Evron is interested
in being involved in coordinating landscape
archeology in the West Bank. Ann Killebrew
is involved in creating a Web site for the
PACE and Haifa teams.
Sources: U.S. Department of State's Bureau of
International Information Programs |