Jericho doesn’t belong solely to the Palestinians. It belongs to all humanity.
For Israel, nevertheless, UNESCO’s recognition of Jericho as a “World Heritage Website in Palestine” complicates its mission to erase Palestine, bodily and figuratively, from existence.
The choice was described by the Israeli International Ministry as a “cynical” ploy by the Palestinians to politicize UNESCO.
That is ironic, as Israel has politicized historical past by eradicating every little thing that may be interpreted as a part of the Palestinian historic heritage, whereas on the similar time advancing a self-centered and largely fabricated view of historical past that supposedly belongs to Israel, and to Israel solely.
Though Israel, because of its huge navy energy, has succeeded in dominating the Palestinian bodily panorama, it has largely did not dominate the historical past of Palestine.
Apartheid partitions, navy checkpoints and unlawful Jewish settlements are simple to construct. Nonetheless, developing a historic narrative that’s riddled with lies, half-truths and omissions is nearly unimaginable to keep up for lengthy.
READ: UNESCO declares the traditional ruins of Jericho a World Heritage Website in Palestine
All that is a part of an extended Israeli-American conflict towards UNESCO. In 2019, the US and Israel formally withdrew from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. This adopted repeated threats from a number of US administrations and a funding lower by the Obama administration in 2011.
However why such a fierce and decided conflict towards a corporation that describes itself as a promoter of ‘world peace and safety via worldwide cooperation in training, the humanities, sciences and tradition’?
In actual fact, UNESCO is likely one of the few UN-affiliated worldwide establishments that’s the least politicized, based mostly on the idea that the previous, and what stays of it, is a standard heritage that belongs to us all.
Nonetheless acceptable such a declare could also be to many international locations around the globe, to Israel, UNESCO’s harmless gestures in direction of the Palestinians are merely heretical.
Not solely Jericho – and particularly Inform Es-Sultan – belongs on the checklist of World Heritage Websites, the 2 ought to be on the high of the checklist. This isn’t grandstanding or another ‘cynical’ use of historical past, however just because Jericho is the “oldest inhabited metropolis on the planet” and Inform Es-Sultan is the “oldest metropolis on the planet” because it dates again to the tenth millennium B.C. Christ.
For instance, current analysis reveals that the pre-pottery tower from the Neolithic interval, circa 8300 BC, marks the summer time solstice. It was the tallest man-made construction on the planet for nearly 6,000 years. That is simply one of many many superb information about Inform Es-Sultan.
All of Palestine is wealthy in such historical past, tracing our frequent ancestry to historical civilizations that merged or merged with different cultures, giving us the fascinating tapestry that’s humanity.
And since the historical past of Palestine is the historical past of humanity, critical Palestinian historians, archaeologists, and intellectuals hardly ever present any ethnocentric possession of that historical past, refusing to say any ascendancy over different cultures.
“All archaeological and historic proof reveals that Palestine was inhabited by many individuals,” wrote revered Palestinian archaeologist Dr. Hamdan Taha within the not too long ago printed e-book ‘Our imaginative and prescient of liberation’.
READ: Israel denounces UNESCO’s determination to incorporate historical Jericho on the World Heritage Checklist
Palestinian historical past covers a interval from “Homo Sapiens to the twenty first century and all through this historical past, marked by many wars, invasions and conversions, (…) the indigenous inhabitants has by no means been utterly eradicated,” Taha writes.
A cautious studying of Taha’s feedback is enough to clarify Israel’s fears, which border on panic, every time Palestine and the Palestinians are linked to a reputable historic narrative.
Two factors are value dwelling on: first, all of the “wars, invasions and conversions” have did not interrupt the demographic circulation and continuity of the “indigenous folks” of Palestine, culminating within the fashionable Palestinians from right now; and second, though some invaders have tried in useless, these indigenous peoples have “by no means been utterly eradicated.”
Israel has achieved greater than merely attempt to rewrite historical past and marginalize the important thing gamers in Palestine’s historic narrative. It has additionally actively and persistently tried to exterminate the natives altogether.
But it surely failed. The variety of Palestinians dwelling in historic Palestine right now is no less than equal to, and by some estimates even increased than, the variety of Israeli Jewish immigrants from Europe and elsewhere.
Israel failed within the “elimination” a part of historical past and is now resorting to the twin technique of ethnic cleaning and racial segregation, or apartheid. The latter apply is now more and more acknowledged by worldwide human rights teams, together with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and lots of others.
The ghosts of the previous are one other drawback Israel faces. A superb cadre of Palestinian historians and archaeologists, like Taha, together with brave and equally good Israeli historians, like Ilan Pappé, are decided to uncover the reality about Palestine’s historical past and Israel’s interference in historical past.
It’s because of such revered people {that a} historical past has emerged that parallels the historical past that Israel created after the Nakba.
Along with Inform Es-Sultan, one other Inform – the Arabic phrase for ‘mound’ – was not too long ago excavated. The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, stated earlier this month that the excavations of Inform Qedesh are “the primary challenge of its form” to disclose a not-so-distant previous.
READ: Historic Palestinian city of Sebastia faces risk of ‘Judaization’
On this Palestinian village close to the Lebanese border, conflict crimes have been dedicated and the hapless villagers, after doing their greatest to withstand the Zionist militias, have been compelled to flee.
To make sure that the villagers by no means return, the Israeli authorities utterly bulldozed the village.
“The dig is the primary in Israel particularly devoted to the archaeological investigation of the legacy of what Palestinians bear in mind because the Nakba,” Haaretz wrote.
For many years, the Palestinians have achieved simply that. A number of generations of Palestinian archaeologists have helped revive a lot of that historical past, each historical and fashionable. “The rule of archeology is to reconstruct the previous with the intention to construct the long run,” stated Taha.
In contrast to Israel, nevertheless, Taha’s imaginative and prescient goals to “incorporate the voices of all peoples, teams, cultures and religions who’ve lived within the land of Palestine.”
This inclusive imaginative and prescient is in direct stress with Israel’s exclusivist, selective and sometimes fabricated ‘imaginative and prescient’ based mostly on navy domination and cultural extermination.
On the prolonged forty fifth session of the World Heritage Committee in Riyadh on September 17, UNESCO simply confirmed the validity of the Palestinian imaginative and prescient. In fact Israel is offended as a result of invaders hate the reality.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
