The World Heritage Committee has named 37 recent sites to UNESCO’s World Heritage List — including one in Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The newly inscribed properties were announced through the forty fifth session of the World Heritage Committee being held from Sept. 10 to 25 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Of the 50 “candidate sites” being considered, these have made the list up to now:
- Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er, China
- Deer Stone Monuments and Related Bronze Age Sites, Mongolia
- Gaya Tumuli, South Korea
- Gordion, Turkey
- Jewish-Medieval Heritage of Erfurt, Germany
- Koh Ker, Cambodia
- Modernist Kaunas, Lithuania
- National Archaeological Park Tak’alik Ab’aj, Guatemala
- Old town of Kuldiga, Latvia
- Prehistoric sites of Talayotic Menorca, Spain
- Santiniketan, India
- Silk Roads: Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
- The Gedeo Cultural Landscape, Ethiopia
- The Persian Caravanserai, Iran
- Tr’ondek-Klondike, Canada
- Viking-Age Ring Fortresses, Denmark
- Zatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops, Czechia
- Forest Massif of Odzala-Kokoua, Congo
- Volcanoes and Forests of Mount Pelee and the Pitons of Northern Martinique, France
- Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan, West Bank
- Astronomical Observatories of Kazan Federal University, Russia
- Khinalig People and “Koç Yolu” Transhumance Route, Azerbaijan
- Djerba, Tunisia
- Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysalas, India
- Yogyakarta and its Historic Landmarks, Indonesia
- The Maison Carrée of Nimes, France
- Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia
- ESMA Museum and Site of Memory – Former Clandestine Center of Detention, Torture and Extermination, Argentina
- Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker, Netherlands
- Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, U.S.
- Jodensavanne Archaeological Site: Jodensavanne Settlement and Cassipora Creek Cemetery, Suriname
- The Ancient Town of Si Thep, Thailand
- Wood Hypostyle Mosques of Medieval Anatolia, Turkey
- Zagori Cultural Landscape, Greece
- Anticosti, Canada
- Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Apennines, Italy
- Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda
A 4th — or fifth — site?
The traditional city of Tell es-Sultan — or Jericho in Hebrew — is the fourth site within the West Bank to make UNESCO’s list, in response to UNESCO’s website, joining:
Positioned 250 meters below sea levels, Tell es-Sultan incorporates evidence of non secular funeral practices, which included “plastering and decorating skulls of the deceased,” in response to a nomination document related to its UNESCO inscription.
Dea / Archivio J. Lange | De Agostini | Getty Images
The West Bank site — regarded as one in all the oldest fortified cities on this planet — dates to the ninth millennium B.C. and is marked by an oval-shaped tell, or mound, near the fashionable city of Jericho.
But Mounir Anastas, everlasting delegate of Palestine to UNESCO, stated that Jericho marks the fifth site within the territory named to the list, a very powerful from a historical and non secular perspective being the Old City of Jerusalem, in response to an announcement on Sunday by the Saudi Press Agency.
The Old City of Jerusalem and its partitions were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981, but UNESCO doesn’t list it under Israel or Palestine. Whereas other sites are listed by country, UNESCO lists the positioning individually, under “Jerusalem (Site proposed by Jordan).”
UNESCO doesn’t list Jerusalem under Palestine or Israel in its online directory.
Source: Screenshot from UNESCO
Israel, which joined UNESCO in 1949, has nine sites named to the list, including Masada, the Old City of Acre and the “White City” of Tel Aviv.
A backdrop of political alliances
UNESCO’s decision so as to add Tell es-Sultan/Jericho to its World Heritage Site has angered Israeli officials, with Israel’s foreign ministry releasing a press release Sunday calling it a “cynical” ploy by the Palestinians to politicize UNESCO.
Anastas credited “all Arabs, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which made every effort to host the session and spared no effort to support the Palestinian cause in all international platforms,” in response to the Saudi Press Agency.
Saudi Arabia’s sympathetic view of the Palestinians has been shaped by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Saudi Arabia doesn’t recognize Israel as a state and has refused to achieve this for the reason that latter’s independence in 1948. Moreover, two of Islam’s holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, are also in Saudi Arabia, giving it a vital role within the Muslim world on the subject of the problem of Palestine’s statehood.
Two sites in Ukraine ‘at risk’
On Friday, the World Heritage Committee inscribed two sites in Ukraine to its List of World Heritage in Danger:
- The Saint Sophia Cathedral and Lavra of Kyiv-Pechersk (Kyiv Monastery of the Caves)
- The historic center of town of Lviv
The committee noted each have been under everlasting threat for the reason that start of the Russian invasion despite “the numerous actions taken by the Ukrainian authorities to guard their cultural property,” in response to UNESCO.
Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral is now on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger.
Joern Pollex | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images
“Their inclusion on the List of World Heritage in Danger reminds the 195 States parties to the Convention of their responsibility to watch and contribute to the protection of those sites,” UNESCO stated.
The 2 sites join the historic center of town of Odesa — named in January — to UNESCO’s “at risk” list.
