Since October 2023, the destruction of Gaza’s cultural institutions has intensified, prompting Palestinians to develop a digital archive aimed at preserving their cultural memory. Amer Shomali, director of the Palestinian Museum, noted that Israel has bombed numerous art galleries and museums, emphasizing the urgency of this initiative.
Building an Unlootable Archive
The Palestinian Museum, based in Birzeit, has launched a digital preservation effort to safeguard Palestinian history. Shomali stated, “We created this platform, the Palestine Museum Digital Archive, which is an unlootable archive.” This innovative project began in 2018, focusing on digitizing artifacts that risk being lost due to ongoing conflict.
The archive currently includes over 500,000 digitized items such as photographs, letters, and maps. It serves as a vital resource for Palestinians unable to access physical archives due to checkpoints and restrictions. Shomali remarked, “It allows you to rewrite the history, but interestingly, bottom-up in the sense that it’s not a state archive.”
Challenges in Preservation Efforts
Despite these advancements, the Palestinian Museum faces significant challenges, including cyberattacks on their digital archive. “Almost every month, we get attacked, and the website goes down,” Shomali explained. To combat this, multiple copies of the archive are stored globally, ensuring that even if one version is compromised, others remain accessible.
