Haaretz reports on a variety of abuses taking place in a nature reserve in the Judean wilderness. Turned over to the Palestinian Authority in the late 1990s, the upper end of the beautiful Nahal Arugot is being subjected to quarrying, building, dumping, burning, and hunting.

“Nothing can grow in these places,” says Amos Sabah, a biologist with the National Parks and Nature Reserves Authority, referring to vast swaths that have been covered with quarry dust. Plant researcher Oz Golan, notes that these areas are on the edge of the desert and have a rich variety of flora, including some rare plants. The wild fauna and flora in the area are disappearing due to systematic hunting and cutting of plants for heating by Bedouin. Adjacent to the nature reserve, pillars of smoke are occasionally visible. These are pirate waste sites where the Palestinians are forced to dump waste, in the absence of organized waste sites.

In addition, archaeological sites are being pillaged.

Inside the nature reserve and at an adjacent archaeological site, the systematic plundering of antiquities continues unabated. National Parks and Nature Reserves Authority rangers last week did a brief survey of a site that was a large fortress during the Byzantine era. In every corner, they found evidence of feverish digging by thieves.

Read the whole article, but it sounds like there’s plenty of blame to go around on this one and that the situation is only going to get worse.

Nahal Arugot near Tekoa, September 2005

We’ve commented previously on the summer excavations at Hazor, Gezer and Gath. There’s more information now on the status of other summer digs. Ironically, this was the first summer in quite some time in which everyone thought the violence had abated and there were no obstacles to a full program. Unfortunately, a decade without a war in Israel seems impossible.

The big dig wrap-up is provided by the Biblical Archaeology Society, with brief summaries by the archaeologists at the sites of Bethsaida, Yavne, Apollonia, Dan, Dor, Hazor, Megiddo, Tel Kabri, and Hippos. You can also read a local newspaper report about the excavation at Dan, pre-evacuation.

Another article reports on the completed season at Gezer (and another here). In the south of the country, the Gath dig continues full speed.

With all of the rockets falling, I was wondering how the Hazor excavation team was getting along. Several of my friends are digging there, but I hadn’t heard from them and a check on one of their blogs revealed nothing. Today part of the team showed up where I live and so I got a report.

They were digging away at 8:30 Thursday morning when they heard some loud noises and saw plumes of smoke about a mile south of the tell. The excavation director decided that they should take an “early second breakfast” and by the end of that, they were headed back to the hotel to grab some things. They spent the night in Tiberias, which today has been hit a number of times as well. There is no word yet on whether digging will proceed next week, but I’ll tell you – not a chance. Not necessarily because of real danger, but because of liability. In the case of Hazor, the complete lack of guidance system on these Hezbollah missiles hurts the excavators. If the terrorists could aim the things, they surely wouldn’t be aiming for a tell (and one of the Palestinians’ ancestors, to hear the late Yassir Arafat tell it).

As far as excavation results, this season seems to have been much better than last. There are some good finds particularly coming out of Area M (map here). Unfortunately, unlike Tel Gath, I don’t know of anything online about this year’s excavation.

Hazor Area A, May 2006