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UNESCO Experts: PA Hebron Heritage Request Excludes Judeo-Christian Heritage
(Jerusalem Post) Tovah Lazaroff - The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) reported to UNESCO that the Palestinian request to list Hebron's Old Town and the Cave of the Patriarchs on the "World Heritage in Danger" list as part of the "State of Palestine" has overly focused on Hebron's Muslim history to the exclusion of the Judeo-Christian heritage. The PA proposal only focused on Hebron from the Mamluk period of 1250 and onward. "This excludes the extremely important time depth of Hebron, a town whose history can be extended back at least a thousand years before the Mamluk period and possibly much longer," ICOMOS said. "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 Cave of Patriarchs. This means that the association of Hebron with Jewish and early Christian societies is given little recognition, and Tel Rumeida [an area of Biblical Hebron] and other sites are excluded from the boundaries." ICOMOS also rejected the Palestinians' 2012 proposal to put Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and 2014 request to place the ancient agricultural Terraces of Battir on the list. UNESCO's World Heritage Committee overlooked those recommendations, however, and approved the requests. Israel fears it will do the same this time around.