Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tipi Hotovely issued a warning Monday to countries participating in a United Nations effort to classify a Jewish holy site as “Palestinian” that they risked participating in “fake history” and aggravating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hotovely convened a meeting Monday of roughly two dozen foreign ambassadors whose nations are represented on a U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) committee that will soon vote on a Palestinian effort to have the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron declared a Palestinian heritage site.
Hotovely described the Palestinian-backed vote as a threat to “co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as to the legitimacy of UNESCO.” She described UNESCO as “kidnapped” by Palestinian efforts at “rewriting history,” starting with last month’s decision to deny the documented, millenia-old Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
She noted the importance of the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is where Judaism’s three Patriarchs are buried, along with three of the four Matriarchs (the fourth, Rachel, is buried near Bethlehem). And she added that Hebron was where King David first established his throne before conquering Jerusalem. She reminded the ambassadors of the effort by Israeli authorities to provide freedom of worship at the Cave of the Patriarchs — something that Jews had been denied for centuries. Israel had recently allowed Muslims to hold an iftar dinner in the cave, she explained.
The Palestinian leadership, she said, was “trying to rewrite history,” to hurt Israel and prospects for peace. She accused the Palestinians of falsifying their claims using photographs taken at other cites and purporting to show the Cave of the Patriarchs. “This is your duty, to say the truth … This is your duty, not to give the Palestinians the ability to use UNESCO … to promote fake history,” she said. She noted that a 1997 agreement with the Palestinian Authority had placed the Cave of the Patriarchs under Israeli control, accusing the Palestinians of trying to renege.
The World Heritage Committee’s 21 members will meet next week in Krakow, Poland to vote on the Hebron issue, according to the Jerusalem Post. Israel has denied visas to the members of the committee because of past decisions it has made asserting Palestinian heritage over sites in Israel. The U.S. cut funding to UNESCO in 2011 because of its decision to recognize Palestinian statehood, in violation of the agreed principles of the Oslo peace process.