Controversial dig: The politics of Israeli archaeology

In Israel, archaeology is followed with the same passion that soccer excites in other countries. That’s because archaeological findings—especially ones that reveal Jews’ ancient attachment to the land—have political meaning. As Israelis see it, such findings show that this is their land and no one can take it from them.

The problem, of course, is that another people—the Palestinians—have similar claims to the same land. Often the two sets of claims clash. The conflict sharpened after 1967 when Israel captured the whole of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Israeli government passed a law uniting the city of Jerusalem—an act that the international community does not recognize as legal. At the same time, Israel made the Temple Mount (known to Muslims as Haram el-Sharif), Judaism’s most holy site, an Arab enclave under the control of the Wakf, the Arab Religious Council.

The Israelis have continued to dig all around Jerusalem, while the Palestinians have tried to stop digs that they see as infringements on their sacred territory. In the 1990s, Muslims undertook their own dig on the southeast corner of the Temple Mount as part of providing new access to the Marwani Mosque (also known as Solomon’s Stables). The dig was criticized by Israelis for taking place without the proper archaeological supervision, and some Israeli archaeologists charged that the Muslim excavators hid evidence of ancient Jewish presence at the site.