Dead Sea Scrolls stolen by Israel: PA

[IndianaGreen]

Another controversy involving the Dead Sea Scrolls, this one involves ownership.

Saturday, 11 April 2009

Dead Sea Scrolls stolen by Israel: PA

PA demands Canada cancels scroll exhibition
OTTAWA (AlArabiya.net, AFP)

The Palestinian Authority demanded this week the cancellation of an exhibition of Dead Sea Scrolls, which it said were stolen by Israel from Palestinian territories, Canadian media reported.

Top Palestinian officials wrote to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking him to step in to cancel the exhibition, which is set to open in June at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), according to the Toronto Star newspaper.

"The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories," said Hamdan Taha, director-general of the archaeological department in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, according to the Star.

<snip>

The Dead Sea Scrolls, written mostly on parchment and partly on papyrus, were discovered in 11 caves on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea where they had moldered undisturbed for roughly 20 centuries until a young Bedouin shepherd discovered them in 1947.

Initially, housed in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, under Jordanian control, the scrolls were absorbed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War, an act considered illegal by international law. The scrolls were then removed from East Jerusalem and taken them to the western city, where they remain today.

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/04/11/70420.html

[aquart]

1. Well, thank heaven.

[Why Syzygy]

2. Does Canada recognize the PA

as the government of Palestine?