One recent Thursday afternoon, an armored bus stood waiting at the entrance to the settlement of Shavei Shomron. Inside the bus, a group of travelers awaited a military jeep to accompany them to one of the most significant archaeological sites in the area: Tel Sebastia – or as it’s known in Hebrew, Samaria National Park.
In the meantime, the guide warned of a high chance of stones being thrown at the vehicle along the way: “Mark Twain also copped stones here,” he said, smiling. He then pulled out a copy of an image of Sebastia that remains scorched in Israeli public memory: Hanan Porat and Rabbi Moshe Levinger being held carried aloft by the crowd, their arms outstretched and faces beaming.
The photo, taken in 1975, is a symbol of one of the settler movement’s greatest victories: Following a mass protest at Sebastia’s old railroad station, located at the foot of the archaeological site, the government accepted the protesters’ demands to settle a military outpost. This eventually became the settlement of Kedumim – the first in the area following the Six-Day War and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
“Hanan Porat has his eyes shut because he sees with his mind’s eye a future where Jews will travel here, and there will be half a million settlers living here,” the guide said.
The archaeological site at Sebastia. The site is in Area C, but all the surrounding facilities lie in Area B.
Tomer Appelbaum
When the military jeep finally arrived, the bus set off for the archbollaeological mound, a 10-minute drive from Shavei Shomron and situated deep inside the West Bank. Due to its location – within the Palestinian village of Sebastia – and the military escort required, Tel Sebastia has yet to make its way into the Israeli consciousness. Nevertheless, there has been an increase in the number of Israelis visiting the site over the past two years, and these days it’s visited by groups about twice a week, with hopes of hundreds more Israelis visiting in the near future.
Apart from these groups, several politicians who have voiced pledges – some more realistic than others – have also visited the site over the past year. In January, then-Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Rafi Peretz stated that he was launching a 24-million-shekel (nearly $7.5 million) plan to prevent the theft of antiquities in the West Bank. To date, the Israeli army’s Civil Administration has recruited additional supervisors to watch over the antiquities at a cost of 2.5 million shekels. Then-Public Security Minister Amir Ohana, meanwhile, declared his intent to establish a police station in Sebastia. Even at the time of the promise, it was greeted with skepticism, not to mention ridicule, by the settlers.
To a large extent, the division of control at Tel Sebastia symbolizes the built-in absurdity of the Oslo Accords legacy: the top of the mound, where most of the antiquities are located, is defined as Area C – an area under complete Israeli control. However, the entrance to the site, which includes a spacious parking lot, cafes and souvenir shops, is in Area B and under Palestinian civilian control. Other antiquities in the heart of the village are also under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.
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An occupation vacation
Although Israel classifies the site as a national park, since the second intifada the presence of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority can hardly be felt there, except on holidays. The heart of the site, which is allegedly under Israeli control, suffers from neglect. Among other things, the old church is spray-painted with graffiti.
Meanwhile, the vacuum left by the Israeli authorities is being filled by the settlers, led by the Shomron Tour and Study Center. For them, Tel Sebastia is not only a symbol of their 1975 victory, but also a significant part of the struggle to put “Judea and Samaria” on the Israeli tourist map (for archaeology enthusiasts in particular).
A Palestinian flag waves in the wind near the entrance to Tel Sebastia. The site is located in the Palestinian village of Sebastia, in Area B of the West Bank.
Tomer Appelbaum
Reaching the mainstream
Encouraging a link between Jewish settlement and archaeology is nothing new. In fact, it’s one of the cornerstones of the settler movement. The “branding” works very successfully at the City of David site in East Jerusalem, as well as at Shiloh and Susya in the West Bank, which have long received school trips. The trend has spread to more remote sites in recent years, including those under the PA’s control.
The correlation between settlement and archaeology embodies two struggles: First, control of the present – who has the right to walk, cultivate and preserve a site? Second is the historical narrative: what’s the story of the area and who can lay claim to it?
In Tel Sebastia, these struggles have intensified in recent years against the backdrop of development efforts carried out by the PA, and the intensification of a settler campaign calling for the application of sovereignty over archaeological sites in the West Bank.
The last battle for the site began toward the end of 2020, after the PA completed some development work there and placed a large Palestinian flag at the entrance. A military order was soon issued for the flag to be removed, “for security reasons.”
“From the moment our renovations began, the Civil Administration intervened, under pressure from the settlers,” Sebastia Mayor Mohammad Azzam said. “The settlers showed up with cameras and claimed we were destroying the site, but everything was under the supervision of UNESCO,” he added.
Azzam’s sense that Palestinian work at the site was being monitored was not unfounded. One of the bodies conducting it was Preserving the Eternal, a settler organization established in 2015 and registered as an association about two years ago. “We saw people working with tools in such a way that damaged the antiquities,” said Moshe Gutman, the organization’s chairman.
According to Gutman, who lives in the settlement of Kochav Hashahar, Tel Sebastia is a prime example of the deliberate removal of Jewish heritage in the West Bank. “The PA simply denies any biblical significance to the place – it’s an act of erasure,” he said.
Indeed, Sebastia’s mayor maintains that the site is no connection to Jewish history. “There is nothing in Tel Sebastia related to the history of the Jews or Israel,” Azzam said. “Beyond that, there are attempts to falsify this history, and we oppose that.”
His remarks echo a hardening Palestinian stance of recent years, one that rejects any link between places like Tel Sebastia and the Temple Mount to Jewish history.
An amphitheater at the archaeological site of Tel Sebastia.
Tomer Appelbaum
Azzam wants to convey a message to Israelis: he and the municipality are completely opposed to them entering the village, especially under military escort. “Sebastia is a Palestinian-Canaanite site,” he said, adding that the municipality has plans to continue developing the parts of the site under its authority, aided by UNESCO.
Despite both sides’ claims, it appears that, like all the great mounds in this region, the archaeology at Tel Sebastia refuses to abide by one simple national narrative and tells instead a complex historical-cultural story.
The older strata at the site are linked to the capital city of the House of Omri, rulers of the Kingdom of Israel – the northern kingdom that split, according to the Bible, from the United Kingdom of David and Solomon. Some of the most impressive remains from the period were discovered in these strata, including the remains of a palace, a hewn tomb cave and potsherds with Hebrew words inscribed on them.
But these very remains also serve as the strongest evidence for “minimalist” archaeologists who reject the Bible as a historical document. Tel Sebastia’s archaeology proves that, contrary to the biblical narrative, Samaria – and not David and Solomon’s Jerusalem – was the most prominent city in the Land of Israel at that time.
Iron Age findings in Jerusalem are immeasurably poorer than those at Tel Sebastia. Even ignoring the biblical debate, the findings at Tel Sebastia do not help establish a clear and coherent Israeli-Jewish narrative. The most important findings are actually ivory objects featuring Syrian, Phoenician and Egyptian motifs. A clue to these ivory objects can be found in the biblical text that speaks of King Ahab’s “ivory palace.”
In order to fully take the site to their hearts, the settler guides are required to embrace the kings of Israel. However, according to the Bible, they were all great sinners. According to archaeologist Yoni Mizrahi, of the critical archaeology organization Emek Shaveh, the settlers are currently attempting to “rehabilitate” Omri and Ahab: “Just like they reappropriated Herod, who murdered thousands of Jews and became the great builder, they’re now whitewashing Omri,” he explained.
Israeli soldiers and tourists at Tel Sebastia. ‘The army needs to preserve our historical values,’ Elmakias says.
Tomer Appelbaum
An error covered in nationalism
Criticism of the “nationalization of antiquities” for the sake of a national narrative is not unique to Israelis. A Palestinian archaeologist who asked not to be named criticized the work being carried out by the Palestinian municipality at the site, which included parking arrangements and renovating sidewalks in the compound, as well as the hoisting of the flag.
“There were antiquities found under the construction site, there are archaeological findings there and this was not done properly,” the archaeologist complained. “Professionally, this was a huge mistake, a big mistake awash with nationalism – to which they added the flag.”
The new strata excavated at the site further complicate the story, because they include a Roman city built by King Herod, topped by a huge temple in honor of Emperor Augustus. According to Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, the temple was so large that ships entering the port of Caesarea, 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) away, used it for orientation purposes. The remains of an impressive Byzantine church feature saintly depictions of the burial place of John the Baptist’s head. Furthermore, significant relics from the Crusader and Muslim periods can be found on the mound and surrounding areas.
Of course, anyone who wants to view these findings will have to risk being attacked by stone-throwers – or at least witness some friction between the soldiers who accompany the visitors and young people in the area, who are not interested in hosting any Israeli tourists.
Yet once you reach the mound itself, tranquility is restored. There’s a strange kind of coexistence between the settler tour guides and the Palestinian traders. During the bleak coronavirus period, Israeli travelers and a handful of Palestinians are almost the only ones to visit the site, and the antique coins and souvenir sellers are happy to see them. “We work in tourism, everyone is welcome here,” one of them said.
“We have normalized tourism within Judea and Samaria,” said Amit Ararat, a tour guide from Mitzpeh Yeriho who runs a tourism operation in the West Bank called Travel Fellows. “The motto is to make the citizens of Israel fall in love with the land they’re treading on,” he said.
The site at Tel Sebastia. ‘Wherever Israel discovers something related to its history, it imposes direct control,’ says archaeologist Osama Hamdan.
Tomer Appelbaum
On one tour a few months ago, a couple in their 50s from Kfar Sava came along, having read a newsletter ad. “The more you know the settlers here,the more you like them,” the man said. “They’re Zionists with a skullcap.” On the other hand, his wife, who self-identified as left wing, said she had a political issue with what was happening in the West Bank – but she chose to come precisely because of that, “to see firsthand.”
Tiki, a secular woman in her 50s from the secular-religious settlement of Alei Zahav, also defined herself as a left-winger. She joined the tour as a hiking enthusiast. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I don’t feel comfortable with the military escort, for one. This shouldn’t be their job.” She will return to Tel Sebastia – if at all, she added – when there is peace.
“The army has an interest in securing and getting to know the area,” explained Yair Elmakias, chairman of the Shomron Tour and Study Center and a resident of the settlement of Itamar. He is writing a doctorate in archaeology at Ariel University, whose archaeology school plays an important part in the struggle over heritage sites: While archaeologists from universities in Israel itself are often reluctant to join archaeological digs in the West Bank, for fear of jeopardizing their relations with universities and research funds globally, Ariel has no such problem.
According to Elmakias, the International Foundation for Science, the largest funding source for research in Israel, compensates researchers from Ariel for the lack of overseas funding. This is how Ariel researchers submit applications for excavation licenses in the occupied territories. Lately, Elmakias claims, the Civil Administration is cracking down on licenses issued for non-state land.
Tomer Appelbaum
In the meantime, he coordinates most of the local tours. In addition to Tel Sebastia, the tour center organizes a variety of trips around Samaria – including to sites that have made headlines in the past year such as Mount Ebal (potentially the site of Joshua’s altar, which was reportedly damaged by Palestinian road work), and Tel Aroma, where the PA reportedly demolished a Hasmonean dynasty fortress.
The center liaises with the army and arranges the escorts, thus making the sites accessible to the general public. The center, which is supported by the local education council, was established in 1986. On average, Elmakias said, it facilitates travel for 50,000 people a year, including students.
“I want Kibbutz Givat Brenner to come here on their annual trip,” Elmakias said, sharing his vision. According to him, the site has a hard time winning over secular high schools. “There’s always some parent who’ll make a fuss and voice their opposition,” he sighed.
Unlike those spoilsport parents, Elmakias claimed that Israel Defense Forces brigades have expressed joy about the tours, saying they give soldiers a better knowledge of the area.
“The army needs to preserve our historical values. It has a role to protect our lives, but also our quality of life – I want my daughter to be free to swim in the water hole, and for us to be able to travel at midnight without fear,” he said.
A young soldier in the area was seemingly unperturbed by the fact that he was entrusted with escorting a tour to an archaeological site. “We do it with love. To tell you it’s a great joy? No. But that’s our job and that’s the reality,” he said, adding that Sebastia was a “relatively calm” village.
Tourists at Tel Sebastia. ‘We work in tourism, everyone is welcome here,’ says one souvenir seller at the site. Tensions between locals and Israeli soldiers run high.
Tomer Appelbaum
The feeling wasn’t reciprocated in the village. “I refer to the settlers’ visits to the site as ‘incursions,’ and everyone who lives in the area suffers,” said Mayor Azzam. “The army will come even during the night, firing stun grenades. It’s all for the settlers,” he added.
Last October, a Palestinian resident of the neighboring village of Burqa, who was visiting a cafe in Sebastia, lost an eye after being hit by IDF-fired rubber bullets. Like many Palestinians in the area, he was there to take in the beauty of the site of an evening. This was not an isolated incident: the idyll is occasionally shattered when the army enters Sebastia at night.
“Wherever Israel discovers something related to its history, it imposes direct control – and people are afraid of this,” said archaeologist Osama Hamdan about the complex Palestinian-Israeli relationship with archaeology. “In the excavation I led, I found a Crusader chapel. It was inside the room of a private dwelling and the owner was so scared. He thought the Israelis would come and take his house.”
Hamdan, who was involved in preservation of the antiquities located at Tel Sebastia, believes an equally important type of preservation effort is needed to cultivate the local community’s connection with the site – as well as encouraging more tourism related to the antiquities located within the village itself, not just the main Israeli-controlled site.
He noted that many of the archaeological findings excavated at Tel Sebastia are located in Jerusalem’s Rockefeller Museum. “Many people have gone through Sebastia throughout history: Jews, Arabs, Romans. The fact that the Kingdom of Israel was there for a short time doesn’t mean that Israel should control it,” he said, noting that Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, was also Phoenician.
Toward the end of the tour organized by Elmakias, several stones were thrown in the direction of the restaurant where the group was sitting. The soldiers were not particularly phased by what took place, but fired a stun grenade, put on their helmets and began to hurry the tourists along. “We’ll set out on foot to draw out the stone-throwers, that’s our job,” the officer explained.
On its way out of the village, the bus was stopped at some checkpoint posts and several stones were thrown at the windows by Palestinian youth. The armored glass windows absorbed the impact and the bus continued on its merry way, the relaxed atmosphere shattered only for the briefest of moments.
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