RAMALLAH, April 9, 2025 (WAFA) – The Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry Wednesday welcomed UNESCO’s adoption of two resolutions in favor of Palestine.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Executive Board unanimously adopted two resolutions in favor of Palestine, namely "Occupied Palestine" and the "Implementation of 42 C/Resolution 49 and 220 EX/Decision 34 concerning educational and cultural institutions in the occupied Arab territories", during the 221st session of its Executive Council held in the French capital, Paris.
The Ministry stressed in a press statement the need to implement the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), issued on July 19, 2024, which found that Israel's decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories was "unlawful", and that its "near-complete separation" of people in the occupied West Bank breached international laws concerning "racial segregation" and "apartheid."
It affirmed that the adoption of these resolutions continues to bear testimony to the international community’s ability to assume its responsibilities toward the peoples affected by Israeli colonialism along with safeguarding their heritage and history.
The Ministry stressed the importance of these decisions in terms of confronting attempts to forge and deliberately destroy Palestinian historical, heritage, and cultural sites, and commit other violations of world heritage sites, including in the occupied city of Jerusalem, the city walls, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the illegal excavations and elevator project at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, and its ongoing siege and destruction of the Gaza Strip. In this regard, it referred to the violations posed by Israeli colonial expansion to the world heritage site called “Palestine: Land of Olives and Vines – Cultural Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir”.
It called on the international community and UNESCO to take the necessary clear practical steps to oblige Israel, the occupying power, to halt its crimes, while noting that the failure to implement the UNESCO resolutions, the provision of international law, and the relevant UN resolutions would only encourage the occupation authorities to continue unabated their crimes and serve to create conditions for Israel to persist with its violations, killings, genocide, and destruction of cultural and holy sites.
It also stressed the need for UNESCO to dispatch a reactive monitoring mission along with a representative of the Director General to the city of Jerusalem to obtain first-hand information on Israeli crimes involving deliberate sabotage and submit reports to the relevant authorities to prevent any further deterioration of the situation.
K.F.
