A UNESCO committee voted on Friday to add an archaeological site in the occupied West Bank and a complex of castles in southern Lebanon to its World Heritage List and List of World Heritage in Danger, despite objections from Israel.
The vote took place at a meeting of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Busan, South Korea, as Israel’s Foreign Ministry urged the committee to reject calls to inscribe the West Bank town of Sebastia and five castles in Lebanon’s Mount Amel area, characterizing their nomination as a “weaponization of cultural heritage.” The committee voted to add both sites to the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger, citing the emergency posed by the concurrent conflicts in the Middle East.
