On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Executive Board in Paris adopted a resolution erasing Israel’s ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
The UNESCO resolution referred to the Temple Mount area solely as the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Al-Haram Al Sharif, ignoring the Jewish claim to the site.
The resolution called Israel “the occupying power” and the Western Wall as Al-Buraq Plaza. It demanded that Israel not restrict Muslim access to the Temple Mount, condemning Israel for “illegal measures against the freedom of worship” at the “Muslim holy site of worship”. It demanded a return to the “status quo”. The status quo since Israel conquered the Temple Mount in 1967 forbids non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount and has remained unchanged.
Blaming “Israel aggression” for the violence at the site, it had no mention of the role of Muslim rioters.
It also condemned the Israel’s plans to establish an egalitarian, non-Orthodox prayer section by Robinson’s Arch.
It accused Israel of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries” located on Waqf property east and south of the Temple Mount, and of “the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”.
It referred to Hebron and Bethlehem as solely “Palestinian sites”.