By Jonathon Cook | Americans for Middle East Understanding | Volume 53 2020
It was inevitable that when the coronavirus pandemic reached the occupied Palestinian territories, as it did in early March, it would find its first purchase in Bethlehem, a few miles south-east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.
Al-Nusra militants by the way are being identified as some of the most active dealers of black market antiques of the Middle East. Lebanese media have reported that a great number of ancient icons, crosses, reliquaries, and statues have been smuggled from Syria into Lebanon and then sent abroad. Local smugglers are said by INTERPOL to be moving hundreds of Ma’loula’s antiquities, transporting Christian antiquities to European countries
