In just six hours, workers evacuated 70 percent of the historic collection, including objects from one of the Middle East’s oldest Christian monasteries. The remaining 30 percent was lost in the attack
Ellen Wexler – Assistant Editor, HumanitiesSeptember 19, 2025
One day after Israel issued an evacuation order for Gaza City on September 9, a notification popped up on Fadel al-Otol’s phone.
It was a warning: The Israeli military planned to strike the al-Kawthar building, a 13-story residential tower that housed a warehouse of ancient artifacts on its ground floor. Otol, a leading Gazan archaeologist now living in Switzerland, would need to help coordinate an immediate evacuation from more than 1,000 miles away.
“It was a catastrophe for me,” Otol tells L’Orient Today’s Zeina Kovacs. “These objects are the fruit of our work in Gaza from the past 30 years.”
The warning sparked a frantic effort to safely evacuate thousands of mosaics, ceramics, coins and other artifacts belonging to the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (known by the French acronym EBAF), a renowned institution that has supervised excavations in Gaza for decades. These items had been recovered from five archaeological sites, including one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the Middle East.
By the time the airstrike leveled the building on September 14, workers had managed to move about 70 percent of the collection. The remaining 30 percent—mostly ceramics and gemstone artifacts—was lost.
“I am so sad. My heart is breaking,” Otol tells BBC News’ Yolande Knell. “It never once crossed my mind that archaeological sites, museums and stores would be destroyed one day.”
Otol, who grew up in one of Gaza’s refugee camps, fled to Geneva several months ago. When the warning arrived on September 10, he helped coordinate aid workers and volunteers on the ground, providing instructions about which artifacts to prioritize.
Meanwhile, Kevin Charbel, an emergency field coordinator for the humanitarian group Emergency First International, spent hours convincing the Israeli military to provide more time to conduct the sensitive evacuation.
Moving such a fragile collection typically requires thorough planning, Charbel tells Melanie Lidman of the Associated Press. And even with an extension from the Israeli military, the archaeologists didn’t have time for thorough planning. On September 11, they hastily packed the millennia-old artifacts into cardboard boxes over the course of six hours.
“This was a high-risk operation, carried out in an extremely dangerous context for everyone involved—a real last-minute rescue,” Olivier Poquillon, director of EBAF, tells Agence France-Presse (AFP). “With almost no international actors left on the ground, no infrastructure, nothing functioning, we had to improvise transport, labor and logistics.”
In antiquity, Gaza was a cultural crossroads and vibrant trade hub. The 25-mile-long strip of land is rich with historic sites associated with the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Persians, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans, among countless other groups. One of those sites is the fourth-century C.E. St. Hilarion Monastery, one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the Middle East. Some of the artifacts unearthed there had been housed in the al-Kawthar building.
Gaza’s archaeology has faced mounting threats in recent decades. When Hamas seized control of the area in 2007, it sidelined cultural preservation and permitted construction at archaeological sites. Israeli strikes have dramatically compounded the damage.
The current conflict began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and took another 251 hostage. Israel has been waging war on Hamas ever since, with the military launching a major ground invasion of Gaza City on September 16. According to Gazan health officials, the death toll has surpassed 60,000; about one-third of the victims are children, and more than 10,000 are 10 or younger.
In addition to the human toll, the war has devastated Gaza’s historic sites. As of last month, UNESCO had verified damage to 110 monuments, religious sites, historic buildings, museums and archaeological sites. According to AFP, the al-Kawthar building held one of Gaza’s only remaining major collections of artifacts.
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Under the 1954 Hague Convention, signatories—including the Israelis and Palestinians—committed to protecting cultural heritage during wartime. In this case, however, Israeli officials said that Hamas had placed intelligence-gathering infrastructure in the al-Kawthar building. “Hamas acted and continues to act in the vicinity of, or beneath, cultural heritage sites,” a spokesperson for the Israeli military tells BBC News.
The artifacts rescued from the building have been relocated to an undisclosed site in Gaza City. According to the AP, however, the objects are being stored outside, leaving them vulnerable to both weather and warfare.
Fortunately, as EBAF archaeologist René Elter tells AFP, the collection had been meticulously cataloged, so photos or drawings of many of the lost artifacts have survived. “The scientific information is preserved,” Elter says. “Perhaps that will be the only trace that remains of Gaza’s archaeology.”
Otol is more optimistic. Everyday Gazans frequently contact him to lament the loss of ancient history. As he explains to BBC News, “I tell them, once the war is over, we will restore these sites and artifacts.”
