Kazim AlamIn a move widely condemned as a step towards de facto annexation of the Palestinian lands, Israel’s Knesset is about to vote on a bill to establish a ‘Judea, Samaria and Gaza Heritage Authority’ under the Heritage Ministry.
The bill, if approved by Israeli lawmakers, will transfer authority over antiquities in the occupied West Bank and potentially Gaza from military administration to a civilian Israeli body.
The name of the proposed authority is based on so-called biblical terms for the occupied West Bank, the area stretching across the eastern border of Israel that Tel Aviv occupied along with East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 war.
It is home to about three million Palestinians, who routinely face a violent displacement campaign by Israel following the latest legal changes meant to drive Palestinians out of their ancestral lands.
Israeli media says lawmakers can vote the proposal into law as early as Monday (May 25).
The legislative move will grant the new body powers to operate even in Areas A and B, which fall under nominal Palestinian Authority control in the occupied West Bank.
The proposed law violates the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling of July 19, 2024, that says Israel must end its occupation of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, dismantle its illegal settlements, provide full reparations to Palestinian victims and facilitate the return of displaced people.
This vote on the proposed authority comes alongside the government’s approval of an $86 million plan for heritage sites in the occupied West Bank – something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has framed as an attempt to preserve the “heritage, identity and historical truth of our people”.
Nasir Qadri, an international law practitioner and critical legal scholar at Koc University in Istanbul, tells TRT World that the legislative move is far more than a simple administrative reform.
“The transfer of authority over antiquities… is a form of jurisdictional appropriation,” he says.
Under Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, an occupying power must respect the laws in force in occupied territory. In the occupied West Bank, the subject of antiquities should be dealt with under the 1966 Jordanian Antiquities Law.
By replacing that framework with Israeli civilian legislation, Israel expands its control over occupied territory, Qadri says.
“This constitutes annexation under international law, regardless of whether it is framed as heritage preservation,” he notes.
Erasure of cultural titles
The bill’s sponsors have made no effort to hide their ill intentions.
MK Zvi Sukkot, chairman of the Knesset’s Education, Culture, and Sports Committee, has said that Jewish heritage is thousands of years old and that it is his duty to protect it.
“There is no such thing as Palestinian heritage,” he was reported as saying.
In Qadri’s view, Sukkot’s statement reveals the legislation’s true aim: the erasure of Palestinian cultural titles through the institutions of the occupying state.
This is not an exercise in abstract legal theory, as cultural heritage forms the “evidentiary foundation of sovereignty”.
“By asserting civilian jurisdiction over archaeological sites across Areas A, B, and C of the (occupied) West Bank and extending that reach to Gaza, this bill operates directly against the evidentiary basis on which Palestinian self-determination rests,” he says.
It transforms Palestinian land into an “administered Israeli heritage landscape”, removing the territorial precondition for any future Palestinian state.
The consequences of the proposed legislation will be long-term for Palestinian sovereignty.
Qadri notes that the bill grants expropriation powers to the proposed civilian body, directly challenging Palestinian control even in territories assigned to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo framework.
“It does not merely threaten a future Palestinian state; it removes the territorial precondition on which that state’s existence depends,” he says.
This aligns with long-standing criticism from human rights organisations and legal experts who view such moves as violating international law.
Reports from Israeli news outlets say the legislation will allow land expropriation under the guise of heritage protection, effectively applying Israeli civil law to the occupied Palestinian territories.
Even Israeli officials have raised alarms.
A representative of the Israeli military expressed serious reservations over the legislative move during committee-level deliberations.
Similarly, archaeologists have warned that Israel will use heritage sites to advance its illegal annexation spree in Palestinian lands.
Qadri ties the bill to broader obligations under international law.
He says the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 advisory opinion affirmed that Palestinian self-determination is an erga omnes obligation – a right owed by all states.
The committee chair’s denial of Palestinian heritage seeks to extinguish that right not through military force, but through the bureaucratic reclassification of a people’s past as someone else’s inheritance, Qadri says.
This undermines the material record through which Palestinians demonstrate “continuous presence, historical title, and the right to determine (their) own future”, he says.
