For outgoing US Ambassador Nikki Haley to call the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization “corrupt” and a “cesspool” was a harsh assessment. Coming one day after the US and Israel officially quit UNESCO, Haley’s social media tirade was also ironic. UNESCO was co-founded by the US during the founding of the UN after World War II to foster peace and protect ancient historical sites.
This latter role has been constantly undermined by Israel. Israel has been severely criticized for its failure to fulfill its legal responsibilities with respect to holy sites in Jerusalem. It was specifically charged with denying access to Muslim worshippers and not taking adequate steps to curb the campaign of settler extremists to assert Jewish claims in the Al-Aqsa Mosque area leading to violent encounters. This serene place of worship has been increasingly endangered by Israeli policies and practices in recent years.
Israel has also been conducting excavations in the area under and around the Haram Al-Sharif - the compound that houses the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. These excavations were heavily condemned by UNESCO which issued a resolution in 2016 criticizing Israel for its overall policies towards the compound.
In terms of archaeological practice, international law is clear: Israel is not permitted to carry out excavations at any sites in occupied territories. Yet, Israel has excavated 980 archaeological sites in the West Bank since 1967 and has appropriated many archaeological artifacts.
What particularly irked the US was that it could not manhandle UNESCO. Unlike the Security Council, where the US can singlehandedly block full UN membership, there is no veto in either the General Assembly or in specialized UN agencies. What especially galled Israel was that UNESCO’s resolutions referred to it as the “Occupying Power” in Jerusalem.
Israel contended that it was targeted by UNESCO which named ancient Jewish sites as Palestinian heritage sites and granted full membership to Palestine in 2011. It was this last aspect that enraged Israel, for it was a successful move by Palestine to sidestep Israel’s attempt to oppose any Palestinian effort to gain legitimacy and attention for its statehood claims. In this regard, Israel’s most basic objection involved the adoption of the title “Occupied Palestine”, giving Palestine the status it is aspiring to establish on its own without any prior agreement by Israel. This by itself infuriated the leadership in Israel.
In the aftermath of the UNESCO vote to recognize Palestine as a state, both Israel and the US stopped paying their dues; the US annual contribution was a hefty 22 percent of the UNESCO budget. Israel, too, refused all cooperation with UNESCO ever since Palestine gained membership, which presupposed that Palestine now qualified as a state.
To be sure, the UNESCO resolutions do not deny Jewish connections with the holy sites of Jerusalem: they just fail to mention them by name. If anything, it was UNESCO that erred in its unwillingness to mention both the Jewish and Arab names for the holy sites in Jerusalem. That had the effect of shifting attention away from the legitimate concerns of Palestinians about the overall failure of Israel to uphold its responsibilities in Jerusalem, which have included a variety of efforts to Judaize the city by stages. It is one more illustration of Israel’s pattern of defiance when it comes to discharging its obligations as set forth in the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties.
Israel failed to uphold its several responsibilities with respect to holy and heritage sites throughout Jerusalem. Its withdrawal from UNESCO was an attempt to avoid implementation of past UNESCO resolutions on Jerusalem. Thus, Israeli failures to carry out the legal responsibilities associated with being an “Occupying Power” with respect to non-Jewish holy and cultural heritage sites is an extension of Israel’s unlawful annexation of Jerusalem.
