Palestine holds over five thousand years of continuous habitation. Its mosques, churches, markets, and homes are the physical record of that history — the threshold a person crossed to pray, the courtyard where olive oil was pressed, the doorway a grandmother opened a thousand times.

Many of these places have been damaged or destroyed. Kharitati exists to record them. Not to mourn them — to remember them precisely, with the rigour an archive demands. Each site is documented with verified coordinates, photographs from before and after, testimony from those who knew it, and citations to the institutional sources that confirm the record.

Current status: Kharitati is in an early phase. The records shown today come from a 2020 municipal GIS survey of Gaza's Old City whose provenance and licensing are still being verified. They are presented as illustrative documentation and have not yet passed the editorial process described below. خريطتي في مرحلة مبكرة: السجلات المعروضة حالياً مأخوذة من مسح بلدي لعام ٢٠٢٠ للبلدة القديمة في غزة، وما زال التحقق من مصدرها وترخيصها جارياً، وهي معروضة كتوثيق توضيحي لم يمرّ بعد بعملية التحرير الموضحة أدناه.

Once the editorial pipeline opens, every record in Kharitati will pass through a three-stage process. A contributor will enter the initial record. An editor will review it for accuracy and completeness. An administrator will verify all sources before publication. No record appears on the map until all three stages are complete.

Sources include UNESCO heritage listings, UNOSAT satellite damage assessments, ICOMOS Palestine documentation, the Institute for Palestine Studies, the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and verified press coverage. Where testimony is included, it is collected with explicit consent from the person sharing it.

Sites in Gaza and other places of active conflict are documented through trusted intermediaries to protect those collecting the material on the ground.

Each site has a permanent URL at kharitati.org/site/[id]. Use the "Copy citation" button on any site to get the formal citation. Journalists, researchers, and academics are welcome to cite Kharitati records.

For contributions, partnerships, or questions, write to hello@kharitati.org.

For sensitive matters or to contribute material from conflict areas, reach us on Signal at the address listed in our editorial standards document, available on request.

Kharitati is built on the work of many — the heritage organisations who have documented these sites for decades, the journalists and witnesses who recorded what happened, the institutions whose archives we cite. We are grateful to all of them.

A living archive of Palestinian heritage
أرشيف حي للتراث الفلسطيني