On May 4, 1937, a Palestinian farmer named Ṣāliḥ al-Ḥajj Ḥamad Abū ʿAwwād he wrote to the British authorities in Jerusalem. For four years he had been waiting to be compensated for 48 dunams of land, approximately 4.8 hectares, intended for archaeological excavations. He had received promises, but the money had not arrived. In the letter he explained that he was in serious economic difficulty and asked for justice. Eight months later, the director of the excavations against whom he had lodged the complaint, the British archaeologist James Leslie Starkeywas murdered along a road near Hebron.
It was the January 10, 1938. Palestine was under the British mandate and was experiencing the great Arab revolt against colonial rule and Jewish immigration. The authorities attributed the archaeologist’s death to an episode of banditry. But that letter, recovered in the archives, tells a story that begins long before the shots.
According to a study published in Bulletin of the History of Archaeologythe murder may have been organized to avenge the expropriations suffered by Palestinian farmers in the village of al-Qubayba. Historians Roy Marom and Yosef Garfinkel they cross-referenced British administration documents, intelligence reports and Palestinian testimonies, arriving at the hypothesis of a targeted assassination with the possible involvement of the rebel commander ʿĪsā al-Baṭṭāṭ.
Below the ancient city were the Palestinian camps
In 1932 Starkey had started an archaeological mission to Tell ed-Duweiridentified with ancient Lachish, a Canaanite city and later one of the main centers of the kingdom of Judah. A site of enormous historical value, which however occupied land belonging to the inhabitants of al-Qubayba, an agricultural village located not far away.
On that hill the farmers grew cereals, planted trees and grazed their animals. It was land used for generations, with ownership also documented through deeds from the Ottoman period. Archaeologists initially tried to purchase or lease the necessary land. Some owners agreed to negotiate, others opposed. In 1934 the British colonial administration intervened directly, disposing the expropriation of the hill.
The expedition had already paid part of the money intended for compensation. The owners, however, continued to wait while the excavations continued. The mission employed nearly one hundred local residents and provided health care. Some families earned important wages and services from it. Others, especially those involved in land disputes, had lost their land and were also excluded from employment opportunities.
There Abū ʿAwwād’s petition document that fracture. The man accused Starkey of repeatedly promising compensation without fulfilling his commitments. The Department of Antiquities’ response was brief: it would have to go to the archaeologist itself or to the Hebron district official. The documents show that Starkey had also urged the relevant offices to release the payments. The problem therefore involved the entire colonial administrative system. For those who had lost their land, however, the outcome remained the same.
Tensions had already taken a violent form. In October 1936, around twenty armed men attacked the archaeological camp, immobilizing the guards and stealing money and watches. Before leaving, the attackers had threatened to set fire to the camp. According to scholars, that episode may have been linked to the land dispute, although there is not enough evidence to attribute it to the men involved in the 1938 assassination.
Palestinian testimonies and the possible involvement of the rebels
To reconstruct the story, Marom and Garfinkel also used the Palestinian Rural History Projectan initiative dedicated to the memory of Palestinian rural communities. A testimony recorded on January 18, 2025 says that, after the arrival of the English, the inhabitants were prevented from continuing to cultivate on the hill.
Compensations were promised as the land came under the control of British administration. According to the authors, these memories are confirmed in the documents relating to the expropriation. The testimonies thus add the perspective of those who had experienced the excavations from the fields, rather than the archaeological trenches.
As for the murder, scholars indicate the possible involvement of ʿĪsā al-Baṭṭāṭcommander of a Palestinian armed formation active in the Hebron region during the 1936-1939 uprising. His name appears in Palestinian news and in British and Zionist intelligence documents. Some testimonies suggest that local intermediaries may have facilitated contacts between the landowners and the rebel group.
On January 10, 1938, Starkey was traveling to Jerusalem to attend the inauguration of the Palestine Archaeological Museum. Along the way, five armed men with their faces covered stopped the taxi in which he was travelling. They asked the driver who the passenger was. When they learned that he was directing the excavations at Tell ed-Duweir, they ordered the driver to leave. Shortly afterwards two shots exploded. Looking in the rearview mirror, the driver saw Starkey fall to the ground.
The recognition of the archaeologist before the shots suggests, according to the researchers, that the attackers knew who they were looking for. The choice to act far from the village may also have been deliberate, to avoid British reprisals against the inhabitants of al-Qubayba.
The hypothesis of the motive linked to the expropriations had already been put forward by Garfinkel in 2016, while other scholars have proposed different interpretations. The 2026 research adds new Palestinian testimonies and documents, without providing definitive proof on the identity of the killers.
The compensation arrived in 1943. Five years later the village also disappeared
In January 1935, after having paid 210 pounds intended for compensation, Starkey had written to the British authorities that he feared that he would not live to see the transaction concluded. Little did he know how tragically appropriate those words would become. The expropriation procedure was completed only on 4 December 1943when the property was formally registered in the name of the British High Commissioner. According to the research, the compensation was paid in that same period.
But al-Qubayba’s story continued well beyond the archaeologist’s death. According to the historical reconstruction of the Palestinian encyclopedia PalQuest, in 1944-1945 the village had 1,060 inhabitants. It had a mosque, a school, some shops and over 8,000 dunams intended for cereal cultivation.
On 28 October 1948, during the war that accompanied the birth of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakbaal-Qubayba was occupied by Israeli forces as part of Operation Yoav. The inhabitants were displaced. In 1955, the Israeli settlement of Lakhish was founded on part of the village’s land. These are events subsequent to the murder, without a demonstrated causal relationship with the crime. However, they are part of the history of the community itself, which had already faced the loss of its land during the British mandate.
Today few traces of ancient al-Qubayba remain: cacti, some olive trees and an old olive grove with stone terraces, now surrounded by fences. The remains of ancient Lachish continue to be studied and preserved. The Palestinian village that stood next to the hill, however, has disappeared.
