A planned Toronto exhibit of ancient Middle Eastern manuscripts is threatening to plunge Canada, along with the Royal Ontario Museum, into the thick of the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Beginning in June, the ROM will host a six-month exhibit of the famed Dead Sea Scrolls, organized in co-operation with the Israel Antiquities Authority.

But top Palestinian officials this week declared the exhibit a violation of international law and called on Canada to cancel the show.

In letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and top executives at the ROM, senior Palestinian officials argue the scrolls – widely regarded as among the great archaeological discoveries of the 20th century – were acquired illegally by Israel when the Jewish state annexed East Jerusalem in 1967.

"The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories," said Hamdan Taha, director-general of the archaeological department in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

"I think it is important that Canadian institutions would be responsible and act in accordance with Canada's obligations."

The Palestinians say the planned ROM exhibit violates at least four international conventions or protocols on the treatment of cultural goods that were illegally obtained.

Both Canada and Israel are signatories to all of the agreements, the Palestinians say.

The letter of protest sent this week to Harper was signed by Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and its second-in-command. The letter to the ROM bore the signature of Khouloud Daibes, minister of tourism and antiquities.

"I'm just hearing about this issue," William Thorsell, CEO of the ROM, said yesterday. "I do understand the Palestinians are making an issue of the ownership. But I'm quite certain the scrolls fall within the parameters of the law."

Officials at Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs had no immediate response to the matter when contacted yesterday by the Star.

The scrolls were discovered in 11 caves on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, mostly between 1947 and 1956, and their ownership has long been a matter of fierce dispute between Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

"We are the custodians of the Dead Sea Scrolls," said Pnina Shor, head of the artifacts treatment and conservation department at the Israel Antiquities Authority. "As such, we have a right to exhibit them and to conserve them."

Written mostly on parchment and partly on papyrus, the scrolls number about 900 manuscripts in all and mouldered undisturbed for roughly 20 centuries until their accidental discovery in 1947 by a young Bedouin Arab.

The timing of the find all but coincided with the establishment of Israel as an independent state and struck a deeply resonant chord among Jews, for the scrolls themselves, as well as their content and their origins, seemed to confirm an ancient Jewish bond with the Holy Land, reaching back to the destruction of the second Jewish temple in 70 AD – and beyond.

"The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls represents a turning point in the study of the history of the Jewish people in ancient times," explains a passage of text on the website of the Israel Museum, which nowadays provides a permanent home for the scrolls, "for never before has such a literary treasure of such magnitude come to light."

The caves containing the scrolls were located near Qumran, in what is now the Palestinian West Bank.

Beginning in 1947, and for nearly a decade, experts from the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, and the École biblique et archéologique française excavated the caves and salvaged the scrolls, only a few of which were found whole. The rest were scattered into thousands of fragments.

Written mainly in Hebrew, and partly in Aramaic and Greek, the scrolls include about 200 copies of portions of the Jewish Bible.

At first, the scrolls were housed in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, which was under Jordanian control at the time.

After the 1967 Six Day War, however, Israel unilaterally absorbed the eastern sections of the city, an act most Western nations – including Canada – regard as illegal under international law. The Israelis removed the scrolls from East Jerusalem and took them to the western city, where they remain.

According to Shor at the Israel Antiquities Authority, portions of the scrolls frequently have been put on display in other countries – including the United States, Britain, Switzerland, Germany, and Australia – over the past 10 years or so.

The protest to Canada may be a test case for the Palestinians.

"This issue has never been raised, so far as I know, in the past," said Thorsell.

The Palestinians say the scrolls are among "millions" of artifacts Israel has removed illegally from Palestinian territory since 1967.

The planned exhibition at the ROM is called the Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World. It is set to run from June 27 to Jan. 3.