PA Launches UNESCO Push to Undermine Israeli Control of Cave of Patriarchs

Adel Attieh, the Palestinian Authority's permanent delegate to UNESCO, told Voice of Palestine radio on Friday that Ramallah has launched a fresh campaign to press the UN body against Israel's Heritage Authority for Judea and Samaria, singling out the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The initiative follows the Knesset's mid-May 2026 bill transferring administration of about 7,000 West Bank archaeological sites, roughly 60 percent of them in Area C, from the military civil administration to a new statutory authority under Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu. The PA move revives its 2017 UNESCO campaign that designated the Old City of Hebron and the Ibrahimi Mosque a Palestinian heritage site, a step Israel and the United States condemned as an attempt to erase the Jewish connection to Abraham's 4,000-year-old burial place at the Machpelah.