Rula Maayah is a Palestinian politician who served as the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities from 2012 to 2013, in the Salam Fayyad government, and from 2013 to 2019, in the government of Rami Hamdallah and again from 2019 to 2024, in the Shtayyeh government.

Biography

Maayah is a member of the

Fatah Fatah ( ; ), formally the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (), is a Palestinian nationalist and Arab socialist political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...

political party and has also served in other Palestinian government ministries such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Justice. She currently resides in Ramallah and Bethlehem and is a member of The Higher Presidential Committee of Churches Affairs in Palestine. While Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Maayah criticised a 2013 exhibition at the

Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...

displaying artefacts removed from the

Herodium Herodion (; ; ), Herodium (Latin), or Jabal al-Fureidis () is a fortified desert palace built by Herod the Great, king of Herodian kingdom, Judaea, in the first century BCE. The complex stands atop a hill in the Judaean Desert, approximately s ...

in the West Bank for display without consultation. During the

2014 Gaza War The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge (, ), and Battle of the Withered Grain (), was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that has been governed by Hamas since ...

, Maayah encouraged the international community to condemn the damage to heritage sites caused by the war. Maayah characterised the

destruction of cultural heritage during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip The destruction of cultural heritage during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip has included the damage and destruction by Israel of hundreds of culturally or historically significant buildings, libraries, museums, and other repositories of ...

as undermining Palestinian identity.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maayah, Rula Living people 1970 births Palestinian women in politics Birzeit University alumni Bethlehem University alumni Fatah members 21st-century Palestinian women politicians