A new exhibition opening in Paris on Friday showcases archaeological artifacts from Gaza, once a major commercial crossroads between Asia and Africa, whose heritage has been ravaged by Israel’s ongoing onslaught.Around a hundred artifacts, including a 4,000-year-old bowl, a sixth-century mosaic from a Byzantine church and a Greek-inspired statue of Aphrodite, are on display at the Institut du Monde Arabe.The rich and mixed collection speaks to Gaza’s past as a cultural melting pot, but the show’s creators also wanted to highlight the contemporary destruction caused by the war, sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.”The priority is obviously human lives, not heritage,” said Elodie Bouffard, curator of the exhibition, which is titled “Saved Treasures of Gaza: 5,000 Years of History”. “But we also wanted to show that, for millennia, Gaza was the endpoint of caravan routes, a port that minted its own currency, and a city that thrived at the meeting point of water and sand,” she told AFP.One section of the exhibition documents the extent of recent destruction.Using satellite image, the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO has already identified damage to 94 heritage sites in Gaza, including the 13th-century Pasha’s Palace.Bouffard said the damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land “depends on the bomb tonnage and their impact on the surface and underground”. “For now, it’s impossible to assess.”The attacks by Hamas militants on Israel in 2023 left 1,218 dead. In retaliation, Israeli operations have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated the densely populated territory.- Lebanon link -The story behind “Gaza’s Treasures” is inseparable from the ongoing wars in the Middle East.At the end of 2024, the Institut du Monde Arabe was finalising an exhibition on artifacts from the archaeological site of Byblos in Lebanon, but Israeli bombings on Beirut made the project impossible.”It came to a sudden halt, but we couldn’t allow ourselves to be discouraged,” said Bouffard.The idea of an exhibition on Gaza’s heritage emerged. “We had just four and a half months to put it together. That had never been done before,” she explained. Given the impossibility of transporting artifacts out of Gaza, the Institut turned to 529 pieces stored in crates in a specialised Geneva art warehouse since 2006. The works belong to the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank.- Conquest -The Oslo Accords of 1993, signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, helped secure some of Gaza’s treasures. In 1995, Gaza’s Department of Antiquities was established, which oversaw the first archaeological digs in collaboration with the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF).Over the years, excavations uncovered the remains of the Monastery of Saint Hilarion, the ancient Greek port of Anthedon, and a Roman necropolis — traces of civilisations spanning from the Bronze Age to Ottoman influences in the late 19th century.”Between Egypt, Mesopotamian powers, and the Hasmoneans, Gaza has been a constant target of conquest and destruction throughout history,” Bouffard noted. In the 4th century BC, Greek leader Alexander the Great besieged the city for two months, leaving behind massacres and devastation.Excavations in Gaza came to a standstill when Hamas took power in 2007 and Israel imposed a blockade. Land pressure and rampant building in one of the world’s most densely populated areas has also complicated archaeological work.And after a year and a half of war, resuming excavations seems like an ever-more distant prospect. The exhibition runs until November 2, 2025.

The United Nations on Thursday accused Israel of destabilising Syria after a wave of strikes on military targets, including an airport, and a ground incursion killed 13 people.Since Islamist-led rebels toppled longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel has launched an extensive bombing campaign against Syrian military assets and conducted ground incursions into southern Syria to push back the new government’s forces from the border.The UN envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, decried “the repeated and intensifying military escalations by Israel in Syria, including air strikes that have reportedly resulted in civilian casualties”.”Such actions undermine efforts to build a new Syria at peace with itself and the region, and destabilise Syria at a sensitive time,” he said in a statement.Authorities in the southern province of Daraa said nine civilians were killed and several wounded in Israeli shelling overnight near the town of Nawa.The provincial government said the bombardment came amid Israel’s deepest ground incursion into southern Syria so far.Israel said it responded to fire from gunmen during an operation in southern Syria and warned interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa he would face severe consequences if its security was threatened.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the dead were gunmen who were killed “while attempting to confront Israeli forces, following calls by the mosques in the area for jihad against the Israeli incursion”.- ‘Military threat’ -An angry crowd gathered on Thursday for the funeral of those killed in Daraa.”This is an agricultural area… where no one threatens Israeli forces. We want to live in peace, but we do not accept attacks,” said one of them, 48-year-old Khaled al-Awdat.The Israeli military said its forces had been conducting operations in the Tasil area, near Nawa, “seizing weapons and destroying terrorist infrastructure” when “several gunmen fired at our forces”.They “responded by firing at them and eliminated several armed terrorists from the ground and from the air”, a spokesperson said. There were no Israeli casualties.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded in February that southern Syria be completely demilitarised and said his government would not accept the presence of the forces of the new Islamist-led government near Israeli territory.In December, Netanyahu ordered troops to enter the UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces along the 1974 armistice line on the Golan Heights.On Wednesday, Israel hit targets across Syria including in the Damascus area.The Syrian foreign ministry said the strikes resulted in the “near-total destruction” of a military airport in the central province of Hama and wounded dozens of civilians and soldiers.”This unjustified escalation is a deliberate attempt to destabilise Syria and exacerbate the suffering of its people,” it said in a statement on Telegram.Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz hit back with a warning to Sharaa in which he pointedly referred to the president by the nom de guerre he used as an Islamist rebel commander.”I warn Syrian leader Jolani: If you allow hostile forces to enter Syria and threaten Israeli security interests, you will pay a heavy price,” he said.- ‘Normalise violence’-“The air force’s activity yesterday near the airports in T4, Hama and the Damascus area sends a clear message and serves as a warning for the future,” he added, noting additional strikes on sites in the Damascus area.A Syrian source told AFP that the T4 airbase was coveted by the new government’s main foreign backer, Turkey, for future use by its military.Speaking during a visit to Paris on Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused Turkey of playing a “negative role in Syria”.”We don’t think Syria should be a Turkish protectorate,” he said.Israel has said it wants to prevent advanced weapons from falling into the hands of the new authorities, whom it considers jihadists.Sharaa fought for Al-Qaeda in Iraq after the US-led invasion of 2003 and later set up a Syrian branch of the jihadist network before breaking off all ties.The Syrian ministry said the Israeli strikes came as the country was trying to rebuild after 14 years of war, calling it a strategy to “normalise violence within the country”.Neighbouring Jordan said Israel’s repeated attacks on Syrian territory constituted a clear breach of the 1974 disengagement agreement between the two countries and a “flagrant violation of international law”.During a visit to Jerusalem last month, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Israeli strikes on Syria were “unnecessary” and risked further escalation.burs/ysm/dv