THE BUZZ: Israel accuses Palestinians of looting antiquities

Six Palestinians were charged in an Israeli court yesterday of digging illegally for antiquities in a remote desert region where archaeologists believe undiscovered Dead Sea Scrolls are buried, Israel’s Antiquities Authority said. The arrests came after a yearlong operation to stop looting in the Judean Desert, thought to be the source of scroll fragments which have recently trickled onto the local antiquities market, said Uzi Rotstein, an Israeli antiquities inspector. Rotstein said he spotted the alleged antiquities looters by chance in late November He was in the desert training as a volunteer in a hiker rescue squad when he took a photograph of a far-off cave on the side of a cliff and noticed two men standing by it. “No one has any business being there on a Saturday morning,” said Rotstein. He said the suspects climbed down a steep 70-meter descent to reach what is known to archaeologists as the previously excavated Cave of the Skulls, destroying archaeological strata in the cave dating back 5,000 years.