With UNESCO vote, Palestinians’ bid for attention backfires

(JTA) — If the latest draft resolution at UNESCO on “Occupied Palestine” succeeded in the Palestinians’ aims to reclaim the world’s attention, then it was a Pyrrhic victory at best and a setback at worst.

Part of an effort on Jerusalem initiated at UNESCO in 2015 by the Palestinian Authority, the Oct. 12 vote saw a comfortable majority of states, including Russia and China, pass language calling on Israel “to cease the persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem, particularly in and around the Old City,” as one clause reads.

Only six countries, the United States and five European Union members, opposed the resolution and 26 abstained.

Yet the specific charges in the text were largely eclipsed by the resolution’s failure to refer to Judaism’s holiest sites by their Jewish names. The erasure of Jewish ties to Jerusalem ignited a diplomatic dispute that is dividing UNESCO, embarrassing some of its member states and exposing the Palestinians to rebuke not only by Israel, but even by passionate supporters of their cause who are angered by what they perceive as an anti-Jewish bid to rewrite history.

The UNESCO vote is part of a broader push by the Palestinian Authority to inject the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into international forums that are not designed to settle such disputes. And while the strategy is alienating some supporters, observers of Palestinian diplomacy say it is a discredited leadership’s survival tactic, meant to satisfy a disgruntled population and prevent the tragedy in Syria and the rise of ISIS from eclipsing the plight of the Palestinians on the world stage.

http://www.jta.org/2016/10/20/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/with-unesco-vote-palestinians-bid-for-attention-backfires