Years of Excavations at the “Masada of the North” Yield Results

The mountaintop fortress town of Gamla fell to the Romans in 67 CE after a protracted battle, earning it comparisons to Masada, which was destroyed a few years later. Because the town remained uninhabited thereafter, it has been a uniquely valuable source for archaeologists—a fact not lost on Shmarya Guttman, who led extensive excavations there during the 20th century. Danny Syon, who supervised the publication of a three-volume report on Guttman’s findings, explains their significance. (Pictures are included at the link below.)

Gamla [was] one of very few sites described in detail by the contemporaneous historian Flavius Josephus in connection with the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE). . . . Extensive excavations have yielded vast amounts of information related to the war against the Romans that enable the resurrection of life in a Jewish town of the period. . . . Gutmann was drawn to Gamla because he considered it the “missing link” in the archaeology of the First Jewish Revolt. . . .

Gamla is a located on a camel-hump-shaped hill—hence its name, from the Semitic word for camel—in the lower Golan Heights. It was inhabited during the early Bronze Age. Protected on three sides by steep ravines, the site was defended on the east by an immense wall. The site was not settled again until the Hellenistic period. The Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus annexed Gamla to his state in 81 BCE, and in 66 CE Flavius Josephus—commander of Jewish forces in the Galilee—fortified the site against the Romans.

Josephus, probably an eyewitness, described in painful detai the siege of Gamla by three Roman legions; after one unsuccessful attack, a second succeeded, in which the Jewish defenders were eventually slaughtered along with thousands of women and children, many of whom perished in an attempt to flee down the steep northern slope.

Read more at ASOR

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, History & Ideas, Josephus, Judean Revolt, Masada

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF