144-226 Historic Buildings Damaged In Gaza Imbas Israeli Invasion, Palestinians Start Restoration

JAKARTA - One by one a bucket filled with sand and mortar from the collapse of the remains of a museum building in Gaza City was lifted. Workers began cleaning up a medieval fort building that was destroyed by an Israeli military attack on Gaza for the past two years.

A total of 12 workers in clear jackets worked manually to dig up the remains of the Pasha Palace Museum building that was damaged by the bomb. They pile up rocks that can still be used, while the debris that will be thrown away is placed in other piles.

On the skies of the building where Napoleon Bonaparte used to stay overnight in Gaza, an unmanned Israeli reconnaissance drone or aircraft cares hard.

"The Pasha Palace Museum is one of the most important sites destroyed during the recent war in Gaza City," said Hamouda Al-Dahdar, a historyist and cultural heritage expert in charge of restoration work, quoted from AFP, Friday, November 14.

He added that more than 70 percent of the museum's buildings were destroyed.

As of October 2025, the UN Cultural Heritage Agency, UNESCO, has identified damage to 114 heritage and cultural sites in Gaza, including the Pasha Palace. Damage has occurred since the start of Israel's invasion of Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Other damaged sites include the Saint Hilarion Monastery complex, one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the Middle East and the Omari Mosque in Gaza City.

Issam Juha, director of the Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation, a nonprofit organization in Israel's occupied West Bank, which helps coordinate the restoration of the castle remotely, said the main problem was getting material for restoration in Gaza.

"There is no more material, and we only manage debris, collect stones, sort these stones, and only carry out minimal intervention for consolidation," Juha said.

Israel has imposed strict restrictions on the Gaza Strip since its invasion, which left Palestinians in Gaza deficient in various needs, including food and medicines.

After the US-brokered ceasefire deal took effect in October 2025, aid trucks began to flow in greater quantities. However, every item that crosses Gaza must be approved by a strict examination of Israeli authorities, humanitarian organizations said.

Juha said the ceasefire deal had allowed workers to continue their excavation.

Previously, he continued, it was unsafe for them to work and "people were threatened by unmanned aircraft scanning the place and shooting."

Juha said, at least 226 heritage and culture sites were damaged during the war.

He explained that the number of damaged buildings he got was higher than that revealed by UNESCO because his team in Gaza could access more areas. He said his organization was loosely affiliated with the Ministry of Antiquities of the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah.

Dahadar added that his team had found 20 important artifacts originating from the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic eras.

"Our cultural heritage is the identity and memory of the Palestinian people," said Dahadar in Gaza City.

"Before the war, Pasha Palace contained more than 17,000 artifacts, but unfortunately, all of them disappeared after the invasion of Gaza's Old Town," he continued.

Gaza's history spanned thousands of years ago, making the tiny Palestinian territories a warehouse for archaeological artifacts from past civilizations, including Egypt, Persia, and Greece.

"We are... saving archaeological stones as preparation for future restoration work, as well as rescuing and extracting any artifacts displayed inside the Pasha Palace," said Dahdar.

Along with the increasing pile of excavation debris that was already as high as a few meters, a worker took archaeologists' steps carefully to restore a piece of stone decorated with a cross fitted with an Islamic sickle moon.

Another worker carefully cleaned the dust from a rock decorated with religious calligraphy.

"We are not only talking about old buildings, but we are dealing with buildings that date back to various eras," said Dahdar.