GAZA, (PIC)
Tell Um Amer in the Gaza Strip has been included on the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger, according to an announcement by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
The Organization, which is currently holding a meeting of the World Heritage Committee in New Delhi, wrote on the X platform: “New inscriptions on the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger: Saint Hilarion Monastery/Tell Um Amer in Palestine.”
UNESCO said in a statement on Friday, “This decision recognizes the outstanding universal value of this site and the imperative to protect it from imminent threats.”
It added, “Given the imminent threats to this heritage in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, the World Heritage Committee has resorted to emergency measures under the World Heritage Convention.”
UNESCO wrote on its website that the remains of Tell Um Amer located on the coast of Nuseirat “date back to one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, and constitute an exceptional and unparalleled testimony to the origins of Christianity in the region.”
The Director of World Heritage, Ernesto Ottone Ramirez, stated in press statements that “the request came from Palestine, which considers resorting to UNESCO the only haven to protect the site from destruction in the current circumstances amid the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
The Tell Umm Amer site, which dates back to the Byzantine era and was discovered in 1993, is considered one of the largest monasteries in Palestine in terms of area and design, and the oldest in the Middle East. It consists of 5 architectural parts:
The first includes rooms with mosaic floors, the second is the church, the third is the Diaconicon (an underground cruciform building), the fourth includes the baptistery and its associated halls, and the fifth is the bathing area.
Graves, pottery shards, and coins dating back to the 1st and 2nd centuries AH were also found on the site.
Gaza’s Government Media Office had reported in its latest statistical statement that the Israeli occupation forces have destroyed about 206 archaeological and heritage sites since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a war of extermination on Gaza, which has resulted in more than 39,000 martyrs, more than 90,000 injured, mostly children and women, the displacement of about 1.9 million people, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction of the health and educational infrastructure and famine that has claimed the lives of dozens of children, according to data from local sources and the United Nations.
