TEL AVIV: An Israeli museum that hid some of its most valuable artworks after the October 7 attack has now stashed away even more, fearing a strike by Iran.
Paintings by Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt are among the treasures moved by Tel Aviv Museum of Art to the “safe” — a secured basement meant to shield them from missiles.
Museum staff moved many of the masterpieces at the start of the Gaza war, which was triggered by the Palestinian group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7.
Now, as Israel braces itself for a threatened bombardment by Iran and its proxies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, they have moved other pieces that were at risk.
It has left some galleries vacant, with blank walls decorated only with empty hooks and the small, printed descriptions for the artworks that previously hung there.
“In the last three, four, five days, when this new threat from Hezbollah and from Iran came on the table again, we understood that we needed to take other precautions,” said museum director Tania Coen-Uzzielli.
“So, we took down several other works of art and the ones we felt that were most in danger.
“And since the situation is not going to be clear, and this threat is always there, we feel that the safe place for them is downstairs in the shelters.”
Some items are on display in a protected space on a lower level, but the most valuable pieces are stored in rows of large, metal grills in the “safe.”
“We have some works by Picasso... from different periods,” said Nathalie Andrijasevic, assistant curator of modern art, rolling out one storage rack.
“They are all usually in the gallery, they are all usually hung right next to each other. Here they are still next to each other, but in a completely different setting.”
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 39,929 people, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
“On October 7, we didn’t know what’s going on. We just knew that something horrible was going on throughout the country,” Andrijasevic said.
“Rockets were firing non-stop. And we were just super-scared that rockets will penetrate the ceiling of the galleries and cause damage to our works.
“And recently, during the past week, we’ve been taking down some more because of the imminent attack that is supposed to happen. Hopefully it will not happen.”
Fearing Iran attack, Israeli museum hides top artworks
https://arab.news/9r347
Fearing Iran attack, Israeli museum hides top artworks
- Paintings by Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt are among the treasures moved by Tel Aviv Museum of Art to the “safe“
- Now, as Israel braces itself for a threatened bombardment by Iran and its proxies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, they have moved other pieces that were at risk
High-level Turkish team to visit Damascus on Monday for talks on SDF integration
- The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal
ANKARA: A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkiye views the US-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organization and has warned of military action if the group does not honor the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkiye’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkiye has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganizing the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkiye sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkiye and the unity of Syria.
