Jericho does not belong to the Palestinians alone. It belongs to the whole of humanity.
For Israel however the recognition by UNESCO of Jericho as a &ldquoWorld Heritage Site in Palestine&rdquo complicates its mission of erasing Palestine physically and figuratively from existence.
The decision was described by Israel’s Foreign Ministry as a &ldquocynical&rdquo ploy by the Palestinians to politicize UNESCO.
This is ironic as Israel has politicized history by removing anything that could be interpreted as part of Palestinian historical heritage while elevating a self-centered and largely fabricated view of history that supposedly belongs to Israel and Israel alone.
Though Israel has succeeded thanks to its massive military power in dominating the Palestinian physical landscape it has largely failed in dominating Palestine’s history.
Apartheid walls military checkpoints and illegal Jewish settlements are easy to construct. Constructing a historical narrative that is dotted with lies half-truths and omissions however is almost impossible to sustain for long.
All of this is part of a protracted Israeli-US war on UNESCO. In 2019 the US and Israel officially withdrew from UNESCO citing anti-Israel bias. This followed repeated threats by various US administrations and a cut of funding by the Obama Administration in 2011.
But why such a fierce and determined war against an organization that describes itself as a promoter of &ldquoworld peace and security through international cooperation in education arts sciences and culture&rdquo?
In fact UNESCO is one of very few UN-linked international institutions that is the least politicized based on the belief that the past and whatever remains of it is a common heritage that belongs to all of us.
As acceptable as such a claim may be for many countries around the world for Israel UNESCO’s innocuous gestures to the Palestinians are simply heretical.
Not only Jericho &ndash and specifically Tell Es-Sultan &ndash belongs in the list of World Heritage Sites the two should top the list. This is not grandstanding or another &lsquocynical&rsquo utilization of history but simply because Jericho is the &ldquooldest inhabited city in the world&rdquo and Tell Es-Sultan is the &ldquooldest town in the world&rdquo as it dates back to the 10th millennium BCE.
For example the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Era Tower circa 8300 BCE is believed by recent studies to mark the summer solstice. It was for nearly 6000 years the tallest human-made structure in the world. This is just one of numerous astonishing facts about Tell Es-Sultan.
All of Palestine is rich with such history which traces our common ancestry to ancient civilizations that have merged or fused into other cultures giving us the fascinating tapestry that is humanity.
And because the history of Palestine is the history of humankind serious Palestinian historians archaeologists and intellectuals rarely display any ethnocentric ownership over that history thus refusing to claim any ascendency over other cultures.
&ldquoAll archaeological and historical evidence shows that Palestine was inhabited by many people&rdquo wrote respected Palestinian archaeologist Dr. Hamdan Taha in the recently-published volume &lsquoOur Vision for Liberation&rsquo.
Palestinian history spans a period starting from the &ldquoHomo Sapiens until the 21st century and over this history marked by many wars invasions and conversions (..) the indigenous population was never completely eliminated&rdquo Taha writes.
A careful reading of Taha’s comments is enough to explain Israel’s fears bordering on panic whenever Palestine and the Palestinians are linked to a credible historical narrative.
Two points are worth a pause: one all the &ldquowars invasions and conversions&rdquo did not succeed in interrupting the demographic flow and continuity of the &ldquoindigenous people&rdquo of Palestine culminating in today’s modern Palestinians and two those indigenous people though some invaders have tried in vain were &ldquonever completely eliminated&rdquo.
Israel has done more than attempt to rewrite history and to marginalize the main actors of Palestine’s historical narrative. It has also actively and continuously tried to eliminate the natives altogether.
But it failed. The number of Palestinians living in historic Palestine today at least equals and in some estimates is even higher than the number of Israeli Jewish immigrants from Europe and elsewhere.
Failing at the &lsquoelimination&rsquo part of history Israel is now resorting to the two-pronged strategy of ethnic cleansing and racial separation or apartheid. The latter practice is now increasingly recognized by international human rights groups including Amnesty Human Rights Watch and many others.
The ghosts of the past are another problem facing Israel. A brilliant cadre of Palestinian historians and archaeologists like Taha joined by courageous and equally brilliant Israeli historians like Ilan Pappé are determined to unearth the truth on Palestine’s history and on Israel’s meddling in history.
It is because of such respected individuals a parallel history to the one invented by Israel following the Nakba has emerged.
Another Tell &ndash the Arabic word for &lsquohill&rsquo &ndash aside from Tell Es-Sultan was recently unearthed. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said earlier this month that the excavations of Tell Qedesh is &ldquothe first-of-its-kind project&rdquo uncovering a not so distant past.
In this Palestinian village near the Lebanese border war crimes were committed and the hapless villagers after doing their best to resist Zionist militias were forced to flee.
To ensure the villagers never return Israeli authorities bulldozed the village entirely.
&ldquoThe dig is the first in Israel specifically dedicated to archaeologically exploring the legacy of what Palestinians remember as the Nakba&rdquo Haaretz wrote.
For decades Palestinians have been doing just that. Several generations of Palestinian archaeologists have helped reanimate much of that history ancient and modern. &ldquoThe rule of archaeology is to reconstruct the past in order to build the future&rdquo according to Taha.
Unlike Israel however Taha’s vision aims to &ldquoincorporate the voices of all peoples groups cultures and religions that have lived on the land of Palestine.&rdquo
This inclusive vision is at direct odds with Israel’s exclusivist selective and often fabricated &lsquovision&rsquo predicated on military domination and cultural erasure.
In its Extended 45th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Riyadh on 17 September UNESCO has just confirmed the validity of the Palestinian vision. Naturally Israel is angry because invaders hate the truth.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is &lsquoThese Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons&rsquo. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).
