(CNN) — From a remote hilltop just north of Nablus, the view stretches across the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlements, Palestinian villages and the winding roads and checkpoints that connect – and divide – them.
Scattered among the olive groves below lie thousands of years of history: the remains of an ancient palace, a Roman theater and weathered columns that have outlasted empires. Sebastia is one of the most layered archaeological sites in the Middle East. And right now, it is a flashpoint in a fight between Israeli and Palestinain authorities over land, heritage and narrative.
Over the past year, Israel has moved to seize roughly 500 acres of privately owned Palestinian land around the town of Sebastia, a small Palestinian hamlet with a rich archaeological site. The government allocated $10 million to develop the site into a tourist attraction.
The Palestinian Authority, in turn, is racing to get Sebastia urgently recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site, a bid the organization is debating this month in South Korea. Each side believes the land – and its past – belongs to them.
Sebastia’s history goes back at least 3,000 years. Archeologists identify it as ancient Samaria, capital of the biblical Kingdom of Israel. Herod the Great later rebuilt it, renamed it Sebastia, and added monumental structures that survived through the Roman, Byzantine, Arab and Crusader periods. In the neighboring town, local tradition also places it as the burial site of John the Baptist.
Today, all of these layers are entangled in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the battle over territory and history converge.
Sebastia’s archaeological mound lies in Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli civil and security control according to the Oslo Accords, while the adjacent town and its tourism infrastructure sit in area B, under mixed Palestinian-Israeli jurisdiction.
That dividing line is a growing source of concern for the town’s residents, whose economy largely depends on tourism and agriculture. Locals say they’ve already been barred from basic preservation work on ruins in the Israeli -controlled side. They fear the latest land seizure could sever their access altogether.
“For us, this is our heart and our memory at the same time,” said Zaid Azhari, a local tourism developer. “With this expropriation order, it means we are losing our heart – losing access to our land and to the site. I cannot imagine Sebastia without the archaeological site,” he told CNN. “It’s like your children – you cannot leave one of them.”
Azhari, who is one of the leaders of the “Save Sebastia” campaign, said that friction with soldiers and settlers has made daily life harder for years, warning that the confiscation order could cripple the town’s economy, from tourism to olive harvesting. “If we cannot access them, the whole economic circle of Sebastia will be destroyed.”
Sebastia is only one piece of a wider push. Since 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has invested more than 250 million shekels (about $82 million) in West Bank archaeological sites through a program called “Road, Land, Heritage,” overseen by Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party. The program focuses on sites with Jewish historical significance – among them Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs and Herodium, the fortified desert palace of Herod the Great, while Islamic and Christian heritage sites in the same areas are largely excluded.
“Almost every stone and heritage site contains thousands of years of Jewish history,” Netanyahu said in May, as his government approved another round of funding.”We are investing in preserving our past to secure our future.”
Eliyahu has pushed further, proposing a “West Bank Heritage Authority” that would shift archaeological control from the military’s Civil Administration to his own ministry. However, Israeli officials told CNN Netanyahu shelved the legislation amid concern over international backlash.
Eliyahu frames the effort as preservation and rescue of neglected heritage sites, which he says have suffered from decades of Palestinian looting, damage and destruction.
“I am not willing to have the story of the Jewish people destroyed, dismantled, or erased,” Eliyahu told CNN, describing his work as restoring the “true story” of Sebastia and other West Bank sites.
Eliyahu, who is known for floating a nuclear strike on Gaza in 2023 as “one option,” rejected the premise that the land in question is Palestinian to begin with. “The area is Israeli territory. It belongs to the Jewish people,” he said. “The facts are irrevocable. What are you suggesting that we let them erase our heritage? The fact is that this is the land of our fathers and mothers.”
Israeli watchdog groups tell a different story.
“The government’s only interest is Jewish heritage, erasing thousands of years of human existence in this area,” said Alon Arad, director of the Israeli organization Emek Shaveh, which tracks archaeology in the West Bank.
Arad argues that the policy is less about preservation than about territorial control. “Eliyahu doesn’t care about antiquities. He wants to annex. The antiquities are just the excuse, part of a much more serious process, creating a correlation between heritage and sovereignty,”, he told CNN. “Archaeology is used as a tool.”
He dismissed Eliyahu’s claims of systematic Palestinian neglect of antiquities as “a highly cynical argument” and says there has been no data to support it.
The Palestinian Authority is now lobbying to move Sebastia from UNESCO’s tentative list, where it has sat since 2012, to the full World Heritage list, and Arad hopes UNESCO inscription might restrain further Israeli actions.
Eliyahu, for his part, said: “UNESCO can say whatever it wants. If it tries to go against the truth and invent narratives it will not succeed.”
The West Bank is home to thousands of archaeological sites – estimates range from 2,600 to as many as 6,000 – reflecting its long history as a crossroads of civilizations. Sebastia is a testcase to a battle not just over the past, but about the present and the future of the territory and the people who live near its historic stones.
The-CNN-Wire
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