Former US President Donald Trump will return antiquities belonging to Israel that have been “stored” at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach for the past few months, he said in a statement on Thursday, following the uproar caused by a recent report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said that valuable ancient artifacts loaned by Israel to the US in 2019 were recently found at his residence. Trump.

In the statement published by the Wall Street Journal, Trump said a representative of the Israel Antiquities Authority gave him the artifacts as part of the cooperation and that he intended to send them back to Israel.

According to Haaretz, in 2019, the Israel Antiquities Authority sent ancient ceramic oil lamps to the White House with the condition that they be returned within weeks.

However, this was not done due to “bureaucratic difficulty raised by the Americans”.

Israel then intended to send a representative to take the items back in person, but the COVID-19 pandemic canceled its plans. “We wanted our representative to go and bring them back, but then Covid broke out and everything stopped,” then-director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel Hasson, explained to Haaretz. So the department asked Israeli-American donor Saul Fox to hold the antiquities for a limited time—yet somehow they ended up at Mar-a-Lago. “It is unclear whether or not Trump knows the lamps exist,” the Israeli newspaper reported.

An Israeli official briefed on the matter called it a “misunderstanding” and said the Antiquities Authority “woke up too late” instead of resolving the issue when the White House event took place.