Israeli forces today stole archaeological artifacts from Beit Ummar town, located to the north of the West Bank city of Hebron, said a local media activist.
Muhammad Awad confirmed that Israeli forces stormed the northeastern part of the town, known as Ath-Thaghra, where they unearthed and stole a number of Arab and Islamic-era artifacts.
In December 2018, Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Israel has exhibited some 40,000 artifacts looted from the occupied West Bank at a Jerusalem museum.
Stolen by looters and unauthorized dealers in antiquities from sites in the occupied territories, Syria and Iraq, the items were confiscated by the Archeology Department of the Israeli Civil Administration, the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank.
The move prompted a small group of Israeli human rights activists to gather outside the Bible Lands Museum on January 30, 2019 in protest of the display of the archaeological artifacts at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem.
Israel has been using archaeology as a key tool in reinforcing its bogus territorial claims to historic Palestine, including “Judea and Samaria”, the Jewish nationalist name used to refer to the occupied West Bank, and give them a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy.
There are almost 834,000 Israeli settlers living in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
