A hope for protection and a small diplomatic victory for Lebanon. UNESCO, the United Nations organization dedicated to science, culture and education, announced on Monday, November 18, the placement under “temporary enhanced protection” of 34 cultural sites in Lebanon threatened by Israeli bombing and the granting of emergency financial aid to save Lebanese heritage.
The Country of the Cedars had requested an emergency meeting of the special UNESCO committee in charge of the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict. Fears of destruction or damage to the country’s historic sites are increasing. Eight of the 12 countries that make up the table of this committee were in favor of this extraordinary session.
On November 6, an Israeli airstrike on the city of Baalbek hit the immediate surroundings of the ancient city’s rich Roman remains, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, reviving fears of damage or even destruction of the site. The bombings targeted buildings about 200 meters from the perimeter of the Roman ruins of Tyre, an ancient Phoenician city that also preserves important remains of medieval buildings from the Crusades. And an entire wall of the citadel of Torón, a fortress built in the 12th century.my century, in Crusader times, in Tebnine, near Bint Jbeil, in southern Lebanon, it was destroyed at the end of October by Israeli attacks. Finally, in mid-October, Israeli aircraft completely razed a four-hundred-year-old souk in the town of Nabatiyé, one of the oldest in the country whose history dates back to the Ottoman and Mamluk times.
In addition to the protection of five sites already classified as World Heritage (Baalbek, Tyre, Byblos, the Rachid-Karamé International Fair in Tripoli, as well as Anjar), Lebanon had requested an extension of this protection to the places included in the list of the UN organization. indicative list, such as the fortresses of Beaufort and Tebnine, the site of Deir Kifa, the palace of Beiteddine or the National Museum of Beirut.
“Victory of the law”
With this decision, these sites “they now benefit from the highest level of immunity against attack and use for military purposes”according to the organization’s press release. “Failure to comply with these clauses would constitute a serious violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and would open the possibility of prosecution”UNESCO warns. Sarkis El-Khoury, head of the Lebanese General Directorate of Antiquities (DGA), an organization under the Ministry of Culture, explained to World having asked “This protection is reinforced by the second protocol of the Hague Convention, which stipulates that any aggressor can be prosecuted before international tribunals for war crimes.”
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