In a 24-6 vote, UNESCO [the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] Thursday gave its preliminary approval to a resolution that ignores Jewish ties to its most holy religious sites: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Those who supported the motion included Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chad, China, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan and Vietnam.
Nations that abstained from the vote were: Albania, Argentina, Cameroon, Cote de’Ivoire, El Salvador, Spain, France, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Haiti, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda, Paraguay, South Korea, St. Kits and Nevis, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Togo, Trinidad and Ukraine.
Absent countries included Serbia and Turkmenistan; while the US, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Germany and Estonia voted against the motion.
"The resolution calls on Israel to restore the status of the Temple Mount to what it was prior to September 2000 when the second intifada broke out. At that time, according to the resolution, the Jordan Wakf had full control of al-Aksa Mosque/ al-Haram al Sharif including maintenance and restoration work and regulating access." But it also attacks Israel's oversight and allowing greater access to the site, including repair of the Western Wall and archaeological investigations. The document only refers to the site by its Islamic name.
It appears to me that the purpose of the resolution is to provoke Muslim violence against Israel by undermining Jewish claims to the Temple Mount, and to prevent any archaeological work that would further demonstrate Jewish ties to the Mount or undermine Muslim claims.
For more information on the dispute, see the Gatestone Institute's article "The Temple Mount and UNESCO" from August of this year.
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