'Like first aid for manuscripts': Recovery work begins at Gaza's war-damaged heritage sites

With pickaxes and wheelbarrows, dozens of Palestinian workers in hard hats and high-visibility vests are clearing rubble from the ruins of the Gaza Strip's oldest and largest mosque.

The broken stump of the distinctive octagonal minaret of the medieval Great Omari Mosque and a few external walls are all that remain after it was targeted by the Israeli military during two years of war against Hamas.

Since the US-brokered ceasefire began almost eight weeks ago, work has begun to clear and sort the stones, but actual restoration cannot yet start. Israel is not allowing building supplies to enter Gaza via the crossings, saying this is in line with the truce agreement.

"The challenges we face are first of all scarcity of resources - iron and construction materials," says Hosni al-Mazloum, an engineer from Riwaq, a Palestinian cultural heritage organisation. "Then we're using primitive tools... and being very careful because the stones here are 1,200 or 1,300 years old."

In her cramped office nearby in Gaza City, Hanin al-Amsi has an equally challenging task as she pores over fragments of rare ancient Islamic manuscripts which she has recovered from storage rooms at the Great Omari Mosque's 13th Century library.

"Similar to how we perform first aid for people, we are doing it for the manuscripts," the internationally trained conservationist explains over a video link.

Ms Amsi says a young man from her department risked his life to retrieve some manuscripts when the Old City was under intense Israeli fire early in the war. However, a treasure trove of early Islamic works was left trapped in the destroyed building.

Since a previous ceasefire in January that lasted two months, Ms Amsi has led a team trying to recover those manuscripts - with funding from the British Council, the UK's cultural and educational organisation. They began work moving the rubble by hand.

While there have been "catastrophic losses," Ms Amsi says, remarkably, some 148 out of 228 manuscripts survived. This was largely due to her pre-war efforts, working with the British Library to preserve, archive and digitise the works. They had been stored in acid-free boxes and kept in iron safes.

"Some pieces we recovered looked as if they hadn't spent 700 days under the rubble," comments Ms Amsi. "But others came out looking as if a child had simply torn them to pieces." To illustrate, she holds up a box of charred scraps covered in Arabic calligraphy.

In recent days, Ms Amsi's team was able to use heavy equipment to uncover more badly damaged manuscripts. She says it is now clear that the library's archive - seen as an invaluable record of Palestinian history, with many Ottoman records - was totally burned.

Palestinians accuse Israel of deliberately targeting their heritage sites - a war crime. Israel rejects that, saying it acts in accordance with international law.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blame Hamas for the destruction of important historic monuments and collections, saying that the armed group acted "in the vicinity of, or beneath, cultural heritage sites." At the Great Omari Mosque, the IDF say they bombed "a tunnel shaft and terror tunnel".

Unesco has verified damage to 145 religious, historic and cultural sites in Gaza since 7 October 2023, when Hamas-led attacks on Israel triggered the war. It has largely used assessments from satellite imagery. Local groups which have carried out ground surveys put the level of damage far higher.

Gaza's history stretches back more than 5,000 years. Different civilisations have left their mark: Canaanites, ancient Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Jewish Hasmoneans, Romans, Christian Byzantines, and Muslim Mamluks and Ottomans.

At another location in Gaza City's Old City, a team of young men is removing buckets of sand and crumbled mortar from what is left of the 800-year-old Pasha's Palace - exposing the geometric patterns of a mosaic floor.

"What is being done is just the minimum" says Issam Juha, director of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation (CCHP), which is based in the occupied West Bank and is helping coordinate the work remotely. "For even basic interventions to be done we need cement or lime mortar which is not available."

This historic fortress is where Napoleon Bonaparte stayed in 1799. In more recent times, it had been renovated and turned into an impressive museum displaying prized artefacts from French-led archaeological excavations.

"We are dealing with a building that expresses the identity and memory of the Palestinian people," says Dr Hamouda al-Dahdar, a cultural heritage expert who is leading the on-site restoration effort. "We're determined to preserve what's left of this important landmark."

The IDF told me it had no information about why the Pasha's Palace was targeted in the war. Locals say it was hit by an Israeli air strike and later bulldozed.

Trained labourers are now searching for some 17,000 artefacts that were kept at the site. Most have been crushed or looted. So far, only about 30 have been recovered from the rubble, including a piece of a Byzantine sarcophagus lid and pottery jars.

The work being done is providing desperately needed employment in Gaza, with local cultural groups getting support from international non-governmental organisations.

The Geneva-based Aliph Foundation has given $700,000 (£524,000) for emergency work in Gaza since 2024 and says its experts have near daily contact with teams on the ground.

The British Council says that following the recent ceasefire, its partners are carrying out new damage assessments and safety checks "to understand what future heritage work might be possible".

"There are many archaeological sites that we simply can't reach because of the presence of the Israeli army," says leading Gazan archaeologist Fadel el-Otol, who continues to follow developments from Switzerland where he is currently based.

He cites the Roman cemeteries and the Byzantine Church east of Jabalia camp, in the north - key locations where he headed excavations - which lie in the 53% of the strip still under full Israeli control.

In Gaza City, access to the site of the ancient Greek port of Anthedon is blocked by thousands of displaced people camping there.

"We're unable to assess the full extent of the internal damage," Mr Otol goes on. "No work can currently be done there."

Washington has indicated that it expects progress soon on the next stages of the Gaza ceasefire – dealing with thorny issues of post-Hamas governance, security and reconstruction.

While Gazans feel there is still huge uncertainty about the future, many see the start of work at iconic heritage sites is being seen as a small sign of hope.

Additional reporting by Malak Hassouneh in Jerusalem