Dozens of artifacts extracted from the land of Gaza contribute to highlighting the identity of the Strip, which has been suffering from war for about a year, through an exhibition in Switzerland entitled “Heritage in Danger.”
The Geneva Museum of Arts and History is hosting an exhibition that includes 44 pieces from Gaza, owned by the Palestinian Authority, including urns, statuettes, tombstones and oil lamps, along with a few dozen other artifacts from Sudan, Syria and Libya.
The curator of the exhibition – which will be held from the fifth of October to the ninth of next February – Beatrice Blandin, said that these exhibits are “part of the spirit of Gaza, it is the identity,” considering that the heritage “is in fact the history of this sector (…) And the history of the people who inhabit it.
The 44 pieces are part of an extensive collection of more than 530 pieces that have been kept in boxes in a secure warehouse in Geneva since 2007.
The exhibition is held on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Hague Treaty for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. The exhibition focuses on the responsibility of museums to protect cultural property in the face of destruction, plunder and conflict, and reminds that the deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime.
Alfonso Gomez, a member of the executive authority of the city of Geneva, noted that “the dark forces have realized that cultural property is a civilizational issue, because they have never stopped wanting to destroy this heritage, as is the case in Mosul.”
As for the director of the Geneva Museum of Arts and History, Marc-Olivier Waller, he regretted that “many aggressors in conflict situations (…) intend to harm cultural heritage, because that means of course erasing the identity and history of a people.” But he stressed that “fortunately, there are museums, rules and agreements that protect this heritage.”
Cultural sites have paid a heavy price since the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, which completes a full year this week, and resulted in tens of thousands of Palestinian martyrs and wounded.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) monitored damage to 69 cultural sites since the beginning of the war until September 17, based on satellite images, including 10 religious sites, 7 archaeological sites, 43 buildings of historical and/or artistic importance, and 6 A monument, two warehouses for cultural objects and one museum.
The museum stressed that “the heritage value of the Gaza pieces preserved in Geneva appears greater” given that Palestinian cultural heritage has now become “a victim of destruction more than ever before.”
Daily civil and religious life
These antiquities, which illustrate aspects of daily civil and religious life from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman era, were brought to Geneva in 2006 to be displayed in an exhibition entitled “Gaza at the Crossroads of Civilizations,” inaugurated by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
These pieces were owned by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian businessman Jawdat Al-Khudari, who sold them – those that belonged to him – in 2018. But these pieces, which in the future were scheduled to form the collection of the Archaeological Museum in Gaza, remained stuck in Geneva for 17 years, as they were never able to Providing appropriate conditions to return them to the Strip safely.
Blandan said, “At the time when these pieces were scheduled to be transferred again to Gaza, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, and geopolitical tensions arose between Palestine and Israel.”
Blandin noted that this circumstantial obstruction actually allowed pieces of “major importance” to be saved, while “the entire private collection of Al-Khudari that remained in Gaza was destroyed.”
Under a new cooperation agreement signed last September with the Palestinian Authority, the Geneva authorities pledged to take care of this heritage for as long as possible.
The Geneva Museum of Arts and History had previously been used in 1939 as a shelter for the most important treasures of the Prado Museum and a number of other major collections in Spain that the Spanish Republicans took out of their country by train.
Last year, Geneva hosted an exhibition of Ukrainian works. Switzerland, in cooperation with other countries, was also able to support more than 200 museums in Ukraine, to help them preserve their collections after the Russian war in February 2022.
