There has been another fiery confrontation between Israel and UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, whose actions often touch the raw nerves of Western political sensibilities. This time, the tensions have come in response to resolutions adopted by UNESCO last month that are highly critical of Israel's policies with regard to sacred and cultural heritage sites in Jerusalem. A UNESCO resolution “deeply deplores” Israel's failure to stop a series of excavations and related activities in East Jerusalem. It declares that these are harming Islamic sites, and above all it complains about Israel's interference with worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It also criticises Israel's general failure to cooperate with UNESCO's cultural and religious conservation work in Jerusalem, especially in the Old City, even to the point of refusing visas to UN officials seeking to carry out their duties. Of course, not far in the background is Israel's hostility towards UNESCO. This has been pronounced ever since 2011 when Palestine was admitted as a member state of the organisation despite the vigorous objections of Israel, the US and several European countries. Unlike in the UN Security Council, where the US can singlehandedly block full UN membership, there is no veto in either the General Assembly or in UN specialised agencies. Israel has refused all cooperation with UNESCO ever since Palestine gained membership of the organisation, which presupposes that Palestine now qualifies as a state. Obligingly, the US has followed suit by withholding its annual contributions to UNESCO ever since, a hefty 22 per cent of the organisation's budget. This latest initiative raises substantive issues that are high on the UNESCO agenda. It contrasts with the earlier fight about Palestine's admission to the organisation, which concerned whether or not Palestine qualified as a state that was entitled to membership. In this new case, Israel argues that UNESCO is aligning itself with a sinister Arab effort to minimise, or even erase, Jewish historic and religious connections with Jerusalem, specifically in the area around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the nearby Noble Sanctuary. The UNESCO resolution failed to mention the Jewish names of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, using only their Arab names, although in the resolution's general language it was acknowledged that all three monotheistic religions possess historical connections with the Old City of Jerusalem that should be respected. Israel was correct in asserting that the Temple Mount and Western Wall are the most sacred of all Jewish holy places. But it was somewhat invidious, and not really relevant, to add that the Al-Aqsa Mosque ranked third in the Islamic canon behind Mecca and Medina, and so implicitly had less of a claim on UNESCO's protection if claims clashed. Israel's politicians insisted that UNESCO's approach to its role in Jerusalem in such an allegedly partisan manner was deeply offensive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, never at a loss for invective, put his objections this way: “Saying that Israel doesn't have a connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying the Chinese don't have a connection to the Great Wall” of China, he said, adding that “through this absurd decision UNESCO has lost the little bit of legitimacy that it has.” Let's be clear. The UNESCO resolution does not deny Jewish connections with the holy sites of Jerusalem: It just failed to mention them by name. There was no “absurd decision” as the resolution was a fully legitimate, even overdue, call to Israel to perform its proper role of protecting Islamic sites as the occupying power in Jerusalem. This is in accordance with the law, as well as in the interest of cultural preservation. From this perspective, it is not relevant to mention, much less to criticise, Israel's protection of Jewish sites as they were being fully protected, perhaps even over-protected, or allowed to encroach on Islamic sites. Jordan, among the several Arab sponsors of the resolution, praised UNESCO's “historic decision” as supportive of the very genuine struggle to preserve the status quo in Jerusalem in the face of Israeli efforts to create as much of a Jewish city as possible. In recent years, there have been several reasons for concern about Israel's effort to administer the holy sites in Jerusalem, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Such an even-handed role conflicts with Israel's preoccupation with promoting the primacy of Jewish traditions and memories, seemingly at the expense of Muslim and even Christian concerns. There has been a series of violent encounters at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during several recent religious holidays. This much-beloved mosque has been increasingly endangered as a serene place of worship by Israeli policies and practices in recent years. Israel has also in the past been severely criticised for its failure to fulfil its legal responsibilities with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem as the occupying power. It has been specifically charged with denying access to Muslim worshippers and not taking adequate steps to curb the campaign of settler extremists to assert aggressively Jewish claims in the mosque area and leading to violent encounters. REACTIONS: Overall, it would seem that there are two kinds of understandable reactions to this latest UNESCO initiative. It was entirely appropriate for UNESCO member states and the organisation as a whole to complain about Israel's failures to uphold its responsibilities with respect to holy and heritage sites throughout Jerusalem. This is one more illustration of Israel's pattern of defiance when it comes to discharging its obligations as set forth in the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties. In these circumstances, it was appropriate for UNESCO to act, even with a sense of urgency. At the same time, it was rather inappropriate for the resolution to avoid an explicit acknowledgement of the Jewish connections to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. There was no good reason for such an omission. The UNESCO drafters should have anticipated that only referring to the Arabic names of these sites would be sufficiently provocative to give Israel a plausible pretext for voicing a hostile reaction, thereby evading the substantive criticisms that were at the core of the initiative. These wider policies also led Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, to join Israel, the US, and some European states in condemning the resolution, calling it an irresponsible incitement of violence and swallowing Israel's bait to place all the blame on the provocation and not paying any attention to the genuine substantive issues that lie at the heart of UNESCO's mission. This unwillingness to mention both the Jewish and Arab names of the holy sites in Jerusalem had the dysfunctional effect of shifting attention away from the legitimate concerns of the Palestinians and others about the overall failure of Israel to uphold its responsibilities in Jerusalem, which have included a variety of efforts to Judaise the city by stages. These unacceptable occupation policies verge on ethnic cleansing, with a focus on undermining the Palestinian presence in relation to religious and cultural claims, residence rights, building permits and family reunification in Jerusalem. Thus, Israeli failures to carry out the legal responsibilities associated with being an occupying power with respect to non-Jewish holy and cultural heritage sites should be understood as an inflammatory implementation of Israel's unlawful annexation of Jerusalem. It is possible that this question of acknowledgement might not have avoided Israel's condemnation of UNESCO's initiative. It seems likely that Israel was enraged by this successful move by Palestine to sidestep Israel's attempt to oppose any Palestinian effort to gain legitimacy and attention for its statehood claims. In this regard, Israel's most basic objection to the UNESCO resolution involved the adoption of its title of “Occupied Palestine,” giving Palestine the status it has been aspiring to establish on its own without any prior agreement by Israel. This in itself infuriates the Netanyahu leadership in Israel. But it should be appreciated that Palestine has resorted to the symbolic chessboard of UN legitimisation only after 20 years of frustration with the diplomacy of the Oslo Process. The writer is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University in the US for 40 years. In 2008 he was appointed by the UN to serve a six-year term as special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
