Israel Scores Symbolic Win at UNESCO, Still Faces Uphill Battle

The Palestinian request to register Hebron’s Old City will be up for vote this week at UNESCO’ annual World Heritage Committee assembly in Krakow, Poland this week. Israel will find itself fighting on two fronts as it also seeks to fight a resolution that would condemn it for what a Jordanian sponsored resolution claims are illegal works in and around the Old City.

Ahead of the vote, a report issued Friday by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMAS), an advisory body to the World Heritage Committee said, “Although it is stated that the nominated property is thought to be one of the oldest cities continuously inhabited in the world, the emphasis of the nomination is on a small period of that history in the form of the Mamluk town, apart from the earlier structures of the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque/The Tomb of Patriarchs. This means that the association of Hebron with Jewish and early Christian societies is given little recognition.”