Officials in the Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomed on Thursday the passing of a resolution by the UN’s cultural agency, UNESCO, denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
Nabil Abu-Rudeineh, spokesman for PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, told Haaretz that the passage of the resolution requires the United States to engage in soul-searching and reexamine its backing for Israel.
"There is also a clear message here to Israel that it must end the occupation and recognize a Palestinian state with [eastern] Jerusalem as its capital," he said. Israel must recognize the city's sites that are holy to Islam and Christianity "and bring about an end to a policy that is poisoning the atmosphere" and has "implications on the entire region," he added.
A separate statement from the PA’s Foreign Ministry quoted by Haaretz expressed regret that "[a] few countries succumbed to the PR bullying orchestrated by Israel, which shifted the focus from Israel's illegal and colonial actions in occupied East Jerusalem to issues irrelevant to the content and objectives of the resolutions."
Israel, the statement continued, must "understand that the only way to be treated like a normal state is if it starts acting like one, by ending its occupation of Palestine."
The resolution was supported by 24 states, including Russia and China. 6 countries opposed and 26 abstained. READ MORE
