The Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee is racing against a parliamentary clock to advance a bill that would place Judea and Samaria, Israel’s biblical heartland, under direct Israeli civilian authority when it comes to its thousands of archaeological sites. While the bill’s opponents call it de facto annexation, its supporters call it rescue. The ground itself, scarred by bulldozers and looters’ pits, tells a story that is hard to argue with.
The legislation, sponsored by Likud MK Amit Halevi, would establish a new “Judea and Samaria Heritage Authority,” replacing the Defense Ministry’s Archaeology Unit of the Civil Administration, a branch of COGAT (the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories), as the body responsible for sites that include some of the most significant holy sites named in the Hebrew Bible.
What hangs in the balance of this bureaucratic reshuffling is the physical evidence of Jewish civilization stretching back three thousand years. These sites are the stage on which the entire narrative of the Jewish people unfolds. And in Judea and Samaria, that stage is literally buried underfoot, waiting to be uncovered…or destroyed.
AFSI Insight
The proposed bill is an essential step toward protecting and reclaiming Israel’s biblical and historical heritage in Judea and Samaria. Jewish archaeological and religious sites have too often been neglected, looted, or politically manipulated under existing arrangements, and Israel must take direct responsibility for preserving these irreplaceable treasures. This legislation is not merely as an archaeological measure, but an affirmation of Jewish sovereignty and identity in the heartland of the Bible. It is also a necessary act of national and historical preservation that reconnects the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland while safeguarding sites central to Jewish history for future generations.