The Pasha Palace Museum in Gaza City, a medieval fortress‑turned‑museum, is being slowly cleared and stabilised by Palestinian workers after two years of conflict. More than 70% of the palace was destroyed; UNESCO recorded damage at 114 cultural sites by October 2025, while local teams estimate up to 226 sites affected. Restricted access to building materials and strict vetting have hampered repairs, but a US‑brokered ceasefire in October allowed excavations to resume. So far, 20 artefacts have been recovered from a pre‑war collection reportedly exceeding 17,000 items.
Gaza's Pasha Palace: Hand‑led Restoration Begins After Two Years of War
The Pasha Palace Museum in Gaza City, a medieval fortress‑turned‑museum, is being slowly cleared and stabilised by Palestinian workers after two years of conflict. More than 70% of the palace was destroyed; UNESCO recorded damage at 114 cultural sites by October 2025, while local teams estimate up to 226 sites affected. Restricted access to building materials and strict vetting have hampered repairs, but a US‑brokered ceasefire in October allowed excavations to resume. So far, 20 artefacts have been recovered from a pre‑war collection reportedly exceeding 17,000 items.
01:09 AM, 11/14/2025Culture
Workers manually clear rubble as restoration begins at damaged historic site
With buckets, trowels and gloved hands, a small team of Palestinian labourers is painstakingly excavating and stabilising what remains of the Pasha Palace Museum in Gaza City — a medieval fortress-turned-museum reportedly visited by Napoleon for one night. The site was heavily damaged during two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas, and more than 70% of the palace’s structures have been ruined, according to Hamouda al‑Dahdar, the cultural heritage expert leading the project.
Around a dozen workers in high‑visibility jackets sorted intact stones into piles for reuse and stacked rubble for disposal. Overhead, an Israeli surveillance drone hummed while the team worked in silence, occasionally slowing progress because of safety concerns.
Logistical and security challenges
Issam Juha, director of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation, a nonprofit co‑ordinating restoration efforts remotely from the West Bank, said the main obstacle is access to construction materials. "There are no more materials and we are only managing debris, collecting stones, sorting these stones, and have minimal intervention for the consolidation," he told AFP.
"The Pasha Palace Museum is one of the most important sites destroyed during the recent war on Gaza City." — Hamouda al‑Dahdar
The Gaza Strip has faced strict restrictions since the conflict began on October 7, 2023, creating severe shortages of food, medicine and building supplies. A US‑brokered ceasefire that took effect in October allowed more aid trucks to enter Gaza, but humanitarian organisations say every item still requires Israeli vetting, slowing the delivery of materials needed for restoration.
Extent of damage and recovery work
UNESCO's cultural heritage agency had identified damage at 114 cultural sites by October 2025, including the Pasha Palace. Local teams report a higher toll: Juha estimated at least 226 heritage and cultural sites were damaged during the war, a figure he says reflects access his teams have had to areas international agencies could not reach.
Before the war, the Pasha Palace collection reportedly held more than 17,000 artefacts; Dahdar said almost all went missing after the Old City of Gaza was invaded. So far, his team has recovered 20 important objects dating to the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods. Workers are salvaging carved stones and architectural fragments now to preserve them for future restoration.
As workers sift through the rubble, craftsmen carefully restore stonework — one piece shows a cross combined with an Islamic crescent; another is decorated with intricate Islamic calligraphy. Dahdar emphasises that these structures represent multiple historical layers and are part of the Palestinian people's identity and memory.
Looking ahead
The current work is necessarily limited and largely preparatory: sorting and consolidating what remains while documenting finds for eventual reconstruction. Organisers hope that, with improved access to materials and continued security assurances, a more comprehensive restoration plan can be implemented to return the Pasha Palace to public use and protect Gaza’s multi‑layered heritage for future generations.
Reporting details attributed to AFP reporting and statements from local cultural heritage authorities.