The UN cultural body’s World Heritage Committee is set to vote on a controversial draft resolution challenging Jewish historical ties to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and calling of a return to the “historic status quo” on the holy site. A similar resolution was adopted by the organization’s executive board in April, a move that infuriated Israel.The language of "historic status quo" is new and wasn't in the April resolution.
A revised joint Palestinian-Jordanian draft resolution on “the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls” was submitted to the 21-member committee which is convening for its annual meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. The text calls for a return of the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque to “the historic status quo,” a status that existed before the 1967 war.
The wording implies that the anomalous situation in Jerusalem during the 19 years between 1948 and 1967 was not anomalous at all, but was a "historic status quo."
While this absurd draft resolution denies any Jewish connection to Judaism's holiest site on the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the use of the word "historic" to refer to before 1967 could easily be used to claim that any Jewish presence in the Old City is a violation of the 1948-1967 situation when Jordan ensured that the Old City was Jew-free.
The PLO and Jordan have an interestingly skewed definition of "historic." After all, neither Jordan nor the Palestinian Arab people existed a hundred years ago, if you try to look for them in any contemporaneous newspaper articles or books.
The Palestinians use the word "Historic Palestine" to refer to the borders of British Mandate Palestine, an entity that existed for less than three decades. There are no maps of "historic Palestine" that include those borders prior to 1920.
By emphasizing the word "historic' to refer to events that are a blink in the eye of history, the Palestinians and Jordanians are attempting to remove any Jewish connection to the only historic Jewish land.
After all, if events that happened in the 20th century are "historic," then anything before than is prehistoric and irrelevant.
The intentional misuse of the word "historic" is an attempt to ethnically cleansethe Jewish people from history - and to inflate the value of the recently invented Jordanian and Palestinian Arab people.
Perhaps Israel should submit a new resolution to return Jerusalem to the historic status quo of how it was under King Solomon. At the very least it could expose how the Arabs are trying to hijack the very word.
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