Foreign Minister Riyad Malki today welcomed the adoption without debate by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) of two resolutions on Palestine.
The two resolutions were on Occupied Palestine and implementation of resolutions concerning educational and cultural institutions in the occupied Arab territories.
“The unanimous adoption of the two resolutions comes at a time Israel is encroaching on the rights of our people, including the cultural rights, and attempts to falsify and distort the history and the Palestinian civilization and cultural heritage, especially in Jerusalem, and its illegal work to bury the Palestinian narrative,” said Malki in a statement.
He said that the resolutions were drafted based on the situation on the ground and after monitoring the violations committed by Israel, the illegal occupying authority, against the holy places, heritage, culture, education and all aspects of UNESCO’s work, its areas of specialization, and the conventions and principles of the international organization.
The Foreign Minister called on the international community and UNESCO to put pressure on Israel to stop its illegal actions and attempts to deliberately sabotage the Palestinian Christian and Islamic cultural heritage and to take actual steps to ensure the implementation of UNESCO resolutions regarding occupied Palestine and educational and cultural institutions in the occupied Arab territories, and those related to Al-Haram Al-Sharif and the Old City of Jerusalem, the Ibrahimi Mosque and the old town of Hebron, and to demand a halt to the illegal Israeli excavations in Jerusalem, the construction of a railcar, and the attempts to distort the historical site.
He stressed that the State of Palestine demands dispatching a monitoring mission to Jerusalem to inspect the Israeli violations in the holy city in order to draw a plan to protect its holy sites, especially Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) that includes Al-Aqsa Mosque.
