UNESCO World Heritage Committee has decided to inscribe the Monastery of Saint Hilarion/Tell Umm Amer in Gaza, one of the oldest sites in the Middle East, simultaneously on the World Heritage List, on Friday July 26th, 2024.
Palestine’s Foreign Ministry said the urgent inclusion of the fourth-century Monastery of Saint Hilarion in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah on UNESCO’s world heritage and endangered heritage lists was important to protect the site from “deliberate destruction attempts” by Israeli forces, referring to “the need to protect” the monastery “from danger”.
The Foreign Ministry said the monastery was once a key stop at the crossroads between Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia, and was an “important exchange site for universal human and religious values and an origin for Christianity in Palestine”.
“Palestinian cultural and heritage properties, world heritage sites, and sacred and historical sites” are endangered by the “Israeli war, which directly targets the memories, history, and identity of the Palestinian people,” the ministry added.
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