GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Muneer Elbaz remembers the joy of visiting the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza with his family, praying at a site where people have worshipped over centuries as empires came and went.
“These were the best days,” Elbaz said, as he recalled promenading through the lively markets around the mosque before the Israel-Hamas war. “This place transports us from one era to another.”
Today, much of the mosque stands in ruins — like most of Gaza — after being hit by Israeli strikes in the two-year war muffled by an uncertain ceasefire. The sight of the rubble brings to mind “a tree that had been uprooted from the land,” said Elbaz, a Palestinian heritage consultant involved with recovery work at the site.
Israel’s military offensive killed over 72,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, and erased entire extended families.
Gone too is some of the heritage of a land with a rich history going back to ancient times. The mosque was built on a site where a Byzantine church had stood, and changed hands and even religions as one invader followed another.
With major military operations halted, Palestinians are gaining a clearer picture of the destruction. Some organizations are trying to save what they can at historical sites, even as full-scale restoration — and the broader reconstruction of the territory — face major obstacles.
Dozens of sites were damaged
Israel launched its offensive after Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 251 hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. The military accuses Hamas of concealing military assets beneath or near heritage sites, as well as other civilian structures.
The U.N. cultural agency, in an ongoing assessment based on satellite images, says it has verified damage to at least 150 sites since the start of the war. They include 14 religious sites, 115 buildings of historical or artistic interest, nine monuments and eight archaeological sites.
They are fragments of Gaza’s soul, connecting Palestinians to a place and a history that many fear is at risk of being erased.
“These sites were an important element that solidifies the presence of the Palestinian people on this land and that represents the continuity of their cultural identity,” said Issam Juha, co-director of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation, based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“They want to erase the Palestinian identity and Palestinian heritage and ... to remove any connection that keeps the Palestinian society clinging to this land,” he said.
The center is doing urgent rescue work at the badly damaged Pasha Palace, which housed centuries-old artifacts, many of which appear to have been looted, Juha said. Among the missing items are an Ottoman-era Quranic manuscript, jewelry from the medieval Mamluk era and a Roman-era sarcophagus from which only some fragments have been recovered, according to Hamouda al-Dohdar, an expert working at the site.
The Israeli military said it struck “a Hamas military compound and an anti-tank missile array” at the site. It said its forces struck a “terror tunnel” at the Omari mosque. It did not provide evidence in either case.
Amir Abu al-Omrain, an official with Gaza's endowments ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, denied the allegation about the mosque.
UNESCO does not have a mandate to assign responsibility for the damage it assesses.
An independent commission established by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council said it was not aware of any evidence of a tunnel shaft in the mosque. Noting the Israeli allegations about the mosque, it said that even the presence of a "legitimate military objective … would not have justified the resulting damage.” Israel has previously accused the commission of bias.
