Palestine has urged UNESCO to step in and protect archaeological sites in the occupied West Bank after Israel declared dozens of them as part of its own heritage.
In a statement on Thursday, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Israel’s decision to classify 63 archaeological sites as Israeli heritage, calling it “a blatant violation of international law, the Geneva Conventions, and signed agreements.”
The ministry argued that the move was part of “the colonial ideology of the occupying government” designed to tighten control over the West Bank, reshape its identity, and impose new realities on its geography and demographics.
It described the appropriation of these sites as “one of the largest acts of piracy and theft of Palestinian land for purely settlement purposes under false pretexts with no historical or documented evidence to support them.”
“This is an open crime of falsifying history and the present,” the statement said, urging the international community—particularly UNESCO—to “urgently expose this crime and counter the Israeli narrative that seeks to consolidate illegal settler presence and control over these sites.”
According to Palestinian officials, many of the sites fall within Palestinian towns and cities. They warned that such measures further erode the prospect of a Palestinian state and “erase and alter the identity of heritage sites.”
The Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ), a Palestinian NGO, confirmed Wednesday that the Israeli army had declared 63 West Bank sites as Israeli heritage. ARIJ said Israel has already classified more than 2,400 Palestinian archaeological sites in the occupied territory under the same designation.
The dispute comes amid intensifying violence in the West Bank, where Israeli military operations have killed at least 1,015 Palestinians and wounded more than 7,000 since October 2023.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion declaring Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and calling for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.