UNESCO names new sites to its World Heritage List – including one in the West Bank

The In seventh heaven Heritage Committee has named 37 new sites to UNESCO’s World Heritage List — including one in Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The newly inscribed paraphernalia were announced during the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee being held from Sept. 10 to 25 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Of the 50 “seeker sites” being considered, these have made the list thus far:

• Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er, China
• Deer Stone Exemplars and Related Bronze Age Sites, Mongolia
• Gaya Tumuli, South Korea
• Gordion, Turkey
• Jewish-Medieval Heritage of Erfurt, Germany
• Koh Ker, Cambodia
• Modernist Kaunas, Lithuania
• Chauvinistic Archaeological Park Tak’alik Ab’aj, Guatemala
• Old town of Kuldiga, Latvia
• Prehistoric sites of Talayotic Menorca, Spain
• Santiniketan, India
• Silk Passages: Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan 
• The Gedeo Cultural Landscape, Ethiopia
• The Persian Caravanserai, Iran
• Tr’ondek-Klondike, Canada
• Viking-Age Loop 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
• Time-worn Jericho/Tell es-Sultan, West Bank
• Astronomical Observatories of Kazan Federal University, Russia
• Khinalig People and “Koç Yolu” Transhumance Course, Azerbaijan
• Djerba, Tunisia
• Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysalas, India
• Yogyakarta and its Historic Landmarks, Indonesia
• The Maison Carrée of Nimes, France
• Bale Mountains National Estate, Ethiopia
• ESMA Museum and Site of Memory – Former Clandestine Center of Detention, Torture and Extermination, Argentina
• Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker, Netherlands
• Hopewell Ceremonious Earthworks, U.S.
• Jodensavanne Archaeological Site: Jodensavanne Settlement and Cassipora Creek Cemetery, Suriname
• The Ancient Town of Si Thep, Thailand
• Ligneous Hypostyle Mosques of Medieval Anatolia, Turkey
• Zagori Cultural Landscape, Greece
• Anticosti, Canada
• Evaporitic Karst and Submits of Northern Apennines, Italy
• Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda

The ancient city of Tell es-Sultan — or Jericho in Hebrew — is the fourth situation in the West Bank to make UNESCO’s list, according to UNESCO’s website, joining:

The West Bank locate — thought to be one of the oldest fortified cities in the world — dates to the 9th millennium B.C. and is marked by an oval-shaped tell, or mound, near the la mode city of Jericho.

But Mounir Anastas, permanent delegate of Palestine to UNESCO, stated that Jericho marks the fifth placement in the territory named to the list, the most important from a historical and religious perspective being the Old City of Jerusalem, according to an notification on Sunday by the Saudi Press Agency.

The Old City of Jerusalem and its walls were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage Tip in 1981, but UNESCO doesn’t list it under Israel or Palestine. Whereas other sites are listed by country, UNESCO tilts the site separately, under “Jerusalem (Site proposed by Jordan).”

Israel, which joined UNESCO in 1949, has nine sites named to the list, covering Masada, the Old City of Acre and the “White City” of Tel Aviv. 

UNESCO’s decision to add Tell es-Sultan/Jericho to its Humankind Heritage Site has angered Israeli officials, with Israel’s foreign ministry releasing a statement Sunday employment it a “cynical” ploy by the Palestinians to politicize UNESCO.

Anastas credited “all Arabs, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which vigorous every effort to host the session and spared no effort to support the Palestinian cause in all international platforms,” according to the Saudi Broadcasting Agency.

Saudi Arabia’s sympathetic view of the Palestinians has been shaped by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Saudi Arabia does not endorse Israel as a state and has refused to do so since the latter’s independence in 1948. Additionally, two of Islam’s holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, are also in Saudi Arabia, run out assign it a crucial role in the Muslim world when it comes to the issue of Palestine’s statehood.

On Friday, the In seventh heaven Heritage Committee inscribed two sites in Ukraine to its List of World Heritage in Danger:

The committee noted both have been under permanent presage since the start of the Russian invasion despite “the many actions taken by the Ukrainian authorities to protect their cultural haecceity,” according to UNESCO.

The two sites join the memorable center of the city of Odesa — named in January — to UNESCO’s “in danger” list.