UN committee votes to checklist historic Jericho as a World Heritage Web site in Palestine

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A U.N. convention voted Sunday to checklist the traditional West Financial institution metropolis of Jericho as a World Heritage Web site in Palestine, a call prone to anger Israel, which controls the territory and doesn’t acknowledge a Palestinian state.

Jericho is likely one of the oldest regularly inhabited cities on earth, and is in part of the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution that’s administered by the internationally acknowledged Palestinian Authority.

The choice was taken at a gathering of the U.N. World Heritage Committee in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, below the auspices of the U.N. Academic, Scientific and Cultural Group, UNESCO.

Israel give up UNESCO in 2019, accusing it of being biased towards it and of diminishing its connection to the Holy Land. Israel additionally objected to UNESCO’s acceptance of Palestine as a member state in 2011. However Israel stays a celebration to the World Heritage Conference, and it despatched a delegation to the assembly in Riyadh.

Israel captured the West Financial institution, together with Gaza and east Jerusalem, within the 1967 Mideast conflict. The Palestinians need all three territories for his or her future state. Israel views the West Financial institution because the biblical and cultural heartland of the Jewish individuals.

There have been no critical or substantive peace negotiations in over a decade, and Israel is at present led by essentially the most nationalist and non secular authorities in its historical past, making any transfer towards Palestinian statehood almost unimaginable.

The fashionable metropolis of Jericho is a significant draw for tourism to the Palestinian territories, each due to its historic websites and proximity to the {Dead} Sea. In 2021, the Palestinian Authority unveiled main renovations to one of many largest mosaics within the Center East, in a Jericho palace courting again to the eighth century.