WEST BANK — Israel issued a land expropriation order in November for more than 300 acres in Sebastia, a West Bank town that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. The order is part of a broader allocation of nearly $100 million directed partly toward developing archaeological and tourism sites in the West Bank, a territory the United Nations classifies as occupied Palestinian territory.

The West Bank, referred to by some using its Biblical names Judea and Samaria, contains at least 5,000 archaeological sites. The U.N. has condemned Israeli archaeologists for excavating in the territory. The organization Preserving the Eternal identifies archaeological sites it considers in need of preservation, including a theatre in Sebastia that is over two thousand years old.

Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who is part of a far-right political faction, displayed a ring found on Mount Gerizim in the West Bank that is engraved in Hebrew with the shema, Judaism's holiest prayer. "We are essentially stepping on the story that the entire Bible is based on," Eliyahu said. "Why magical? Because it has been waiting in the ground for 2,000 years."

Eliyahu also said: "If people ask, is this land ours? Here is the simplest and most moving proof."

Talya Ezrahi, a member of the Israeli archaeology group Emek Shaveh, said: "It's been weaponized in the service of enhancing and entrenching settlements and claiming more and more lands that were once Palestinian lands."

Ezrahi also said of the site at Nebi Samuel, where a Palestinian village was dismantled to create a tourist site: "First of all, it is a beautiful site. But at the same time, there is a very important chapter of the site that is missing, and that is the story of the Palestinian village that lived here."

Zaid Azhari, a tour guide who works at archaeological sites in Sebastia and says his family has lived in the town for at least 20 generations, said: "This is totally political. We protect our culture and our ruins since thousands of years."

Azhari described restrictions on Palestinian access to the sites. "The Israelis are not allowing us to work inside this site. If you start working here, you will see the drones above you. The soldiers will come," he said. "It's just about controlling land, stealing land."

Israelis driving to the theatre in Sebastia have had to take off-road routes around the Palestinian town due to high tensions. Israeli authorities said they only demolish structures without proper permits and after all legal proceedings are exhausted. According to tradition, the prophet Samuel was buried at Nebi Samuel around a thousand years before Christ.