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UNESCO Declares Cave of Patriarchs, Rachel's Tomb as Palestinian Mosques
(AP-DPA-Ha'aretz) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday issued a statement condemning the UNESCO decision last week to define the historical sites of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem as Palestinian. "The attempt to detach the people of Israel from its heritage is absurd. If the places where the fathers and mothers of the Jewish nation are buried - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Leah and Rachel - some 4,000 years ago are not part of the Jewish heritage, then what is?" "The State of Israel, in contrast to its neighbors, will continue to preserve freedom of religion at these sites and preserve them for future generations." The UNESCO board voted 44 to 1, with 12 abstentions, to declare Rachel's Tomb, which it referred to as the "Bilal bin Rabah Mosque," as "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories." Israel says Muslims had also traditionally referred to Rachel's Tomb in Arabic as "Qubat Rachel," and the claim that it was a mosque was coined by Palestinians for political reasons only following Arab riots in 1996.