The ancient Monastery of St. Hilarion at Tell Umm Amer, Gaza Strip, has just been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and the World Heritage in Danger List. The decision was made on July 26, 2024, during the ongoing 46th session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, in New Delhi (India). The announcement has been made through UNESCO’s account on X.

The monastery, currently an archaeological site, represents the beginnings of monasticism in Palestine and is a landmark of Palestinian Christianity. St. Hilarion, a Christian of pagan origins, educated in Alexandria, founded the monastery in the 3rd century on his birthplace, a Roman-era settlement that appears in the map of Madaba under the name of Tabatha. The monastery flourished until the 6th century AD. On modern terms, as mentioned by UNESCO, the site of Tell Umm Amer (Khirbet Umm al-Tutt) is located in Al Nusairat village on the coast, and on the south bank of Wadi Gaza, 8.5 kilometers south of Gaza City and 3.5 kilometers south of Tell el -Ajjul.

In 2012, the Permanent Delegation of Palestine to UNESCO submitted a file entering St. Hilarion Monastery to UNESCO’s Tentative Lists as Tell Umm Amer. Following the beginning of the war in Gaza, the UNESCO intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict granted “provisional enhanced protection to the site and designated it as “of interest” in its first preliminary damage assessment report for cultural properties in the Gaza Strip (January 25, 2024). Still, while UNESCO did not note any damages to the site in its report, a Palestinian Ministry of Culture press release noted it as affected by Israeli targeting (January 18, 2024) while NGO Heritage for Peace had noted partial damage by indirect shelling in their November 7, 2023 report.