AN ANCIENT ivory spoon that was recently repatriated to the Palestinian Authority from the United States has sparked a dispute with Israel’s new ultra far-right government over cultural heritage in the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s ultranationalist heritage minister Amihai Eliyahu has ordered officials to examine the legality of the US government’s historic repatriation of the 2,700-year-old artefact earlier this month.

The cosmetic spoon — believed to have been plundered from a site in the West Bank — was seized in late 2021 by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as part of a deal with the New York billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt.

US officials handed the artefact over to the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on January 5 in what the US State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs said was “the first event of such repatriation” by the US to the Palestinians.

This spoon was the first and only item ever to be repatriated to the Palestinians.

Mr Eliyahu’s office said last week that the legality of the repatriation “is being examined by the archaeology staff officer with the legal counsel, which will examine all aspects of the matter.”

Mr Eliyahu is on record as denying the existence of a Palestinian people.

Since taking office, he has accused the Palestinian Authority of committing “national terrorism” and “erasing heritage” at an archaeological site in a Palestinian-controlled area near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Jihad Yassin, director-general of excavations and museums in the Palestinian Tourism and Antiquities Ministry, said: “Any artefact we know has illegally come out of Palestine, we have the right to have it back.”

Mr Yassin added “many of the illicit artefacts that have made their way to Israel’s legal antiquities market were looted from the West Bank.”