Palestinians ‘might claim ownership of Dead Sea Scrolls’
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITIES may seek to claim as their own the archaeological site of Qumran and its Dead Sea Scrolls, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has warned.
The scrolls, discovered in the Qumran Caves in the mid-20th century, date from biblical times and comprise handwritten manuscripts of great historical and religious importance.
Palestinians and their supporters argue that they were discovered in the West Bank and this makes them Palestinian by right, even though the area was a British colony.
They also claim that the Rockefeller Museum in east Jerusalem, where a significant number of scrolls were housed, was in Arab hands before 1967. Israel captured the museum and the scrolls held there during the Six-Day War in 1967.
Speaking at a panel on the denial of Jewish history last week, Shimon Samuels, the centre’s director for international relations, criticised the Palestinians’ record of claiming biblical and cultural sites since joining Unesco in 2011.
He claimed that the request about the scrolls might be raised at the next meeting of Unesco’s World Heritage Committee, to take place in July.
The Committee has previously ascribed to Palestine Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2012, the site of the ancient Jewish fortress at Betar in 2014, and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs in 2017.
Palestinian authorities have a list of 13 additional sites it seeks to register at Unesco, the Jerusalem Post reported.
A fragment of the scrolls went on public display for the first time at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem last week.
The damaged piece of the story relates to the alighting of Noah’s Ark on the peaks of Mount Ararat after the fabled flood. Noah tells how he “atoned for all the earth in its entirety” by offering up various animal sacrifices.
“It’s the first time the general public is seeing it,” Israel Museum director Ido Bruno said.
“We have a window of opportunity today to see it for a few months and then it will go back to the cellars and will not see the light of day again for dozens of years.”
The fragment is presented in a special “smart glass” vitrine that prevents it from exposure to direct light.
Request might be raised at Unesco in July
Fragments of the 2000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls at an Israeli laboratory