Palestine Presses UNESCO to Stop Israel from Looting Cultural Heritage
(MENAFN) Palestinian authorities on Thursday pressed UNESCO to intervene in what they described as the systematic looting of their cultural heritage, following an Israeli move to reclassify dozens of historical sites in the occupied West Bank as Israeli property.
In a sharply worded statement, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Israel's designation of 63 archaeological locations as Israeli heritage sites, calling it a “blatant violation of international law, the Geneva Conventions, and signed agreements.”
“This comes within the colonial ideology of the occupying government aimed at deepening the gradual annexation of the West Bank, changing its landmarks and identity, and imposing new features on its geography and demographic reality,” the ministry said.
Palestinian officials characterized the decision as part of a larger campaign to illegally claim and repurpose Palestinian land. The statement labeled the action “one of the largest acts of piracy and theft of Palestinian land for purely settlement purposes under false pretexts with no historical or documented evidence to support them.”
“It is an open crime of falsifying history and the present,” the ministry added
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Calling for immediate international action, the ministry urged UNESCO and the broader global community to “urgently expose a crime and counter the Israeli narrative that seeks to consolidate illegal settler presence and control over these sites,” noting that many of the targeted locations lie within key Palestinian population centers.
Officials also warned that the Israeli heritage declaration represents a broader threat to Palestinian statehood aspirations: “The Israeli measures,” the ministry said, “undermine the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, while erasing and altering the identity of heritage sites.”
On Wednesday, the Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem (ARIJ), a Palestinian NGO, reported that Israeli military authorities had reclassified 63 West Bank archaeological sites as part of Israel's national heritage registry.
According to ARIJ, the Israeli government has now labeled more than 2,400 archaeological sites across the West Bank as part of its own cultural domain.
This development comes amid an intensification of Israeli military operations in the West Bank. Since October 2023, at least 1,015 Palestinians have been killed and over 7,000 wounded in Israeli assaults.
In a separate but related judgment, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion in July 2024, declaring Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal. The court called for the full withdrawal of Israeli settlements from both the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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