I didn’t take any plane but I’m way jet-lagged. I glance across the Gilo checkpoint from the balcony of a luxury resort, and I can sample a view that encompasses a landscape going from the third world to the very first in a few kilometres. I arrived in West Jerusalem and started my exploration into the (controversial) world of Israeli biblical archaeology. The dig on which I worked looked fascinating, with several layers of stratification that to the clear minds should be enough to demonstrate that this disputed land is best described as an omnibus, with passengers hopping on and off over the centuries. I’ve once been told that biblical archaeology in this land is about colonizing the past, while soldiers, farmers and ultra-orthodox settlers colonize the future. Israel’s first president said that the citizens of the new state had to keep their hands firmly in the soil, referring to the adjacent practices of agriculture and archaeology. After a week of participant observation, it turns out that some of the dig supervisors, local archaeologists, are very scientific in their approach and even critical of the political use of archaeology that’s been done over the years. To the point that the Israeli has to argue with the American volunteers who came here to find their Jewish roots, and believe that if a place is mentioned in the bible, then God granted perpetual ownership.
The name with which the dig is referred to, Ramat Rahel, is modern. This site was not mentioned in the Bible, and the reason for this is still under debate amongst archaeologists. Maybe it was a foreign outpost, and its position would support this view. On a hill higher than Jerusalem, half way between the capital and Bethlehem and overlooking the major trade route of Hebron Road, it made a perfect control device for the Assyrian that subjected the Kingdom of Judah in the fifth century BC. The site was developed during several phases and includes synagogues, churches, temples and mosques. Yet, one particularly intriguing section is the initially dull-looking B3: a stone quarry, turned burial ground in Byzantine times – and also the site of a trench during the 1948 and 1967 war, on the Israeli-Jordanian front. The supervisors of the dig are wary of the religious Jews that wonder around the site (which is a kibbutz, whose permanent residents run the resort) because according to religion, it’s forbidden to unearth Jewish graves. The tombs are given improbable coded names and swiftly covered with plastic canvases when strangers are around.
And yet, a few graves were already profaned a few decades ago by the very tractors that were digging the earth deep down to the bedrock to build the military trench, the outpost in which we also found a flagpole holder. Surgically cutting through the grave and exposing the remains inside them, those machines were actors of a fascinating and revealing game of perspectives on Zionism and its means and ends.
Here is visual story of my trip to Palestine/Israel in the summer of 2009.
Text and photography © Gabriele Oropallo, 2009.