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A 2,700-year-old ivory incense spoon plundered from a site in the occupied West Bank — seized in late 2021 by the Manhattan District Attorney's office as part of a plea deal with billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt, displayed at the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023.
AN ANCIENT ivory spoon that was recently repatriated to the Palestinian Authority from the United States has sparked a dispute with Israel’s new ultra far-right government over cultural heritage in the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s ultranationalist heritage minister Amihai Eliyahu has ordered officials to examine the legality of the US government’s historic repatriation of the 2,700-year-old artefact earlier this month.
The cosmetic spoon — believed to have been plundered from a site in the West Bank — was seized in late 2021 by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as part of a deal with the New York billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt.
Bezalel Smotrich’s measures to extend Israeli property law into the West Bank are a continuation of a decades-long project to dispossess Palestinians and preclude statehood, argues HUGH LANNING
RAMZY BAROUD looks at how entire West Bank communities have been shattered, their social and physical fabric deliberately dismantled by Israel to enable its formal annexation
