Is Israel Giving Jewish Heritage Sites to PA?

The Palestinian Authority wants UNESCO to declare the Patriarchs’ Cave and Rachel’s Tomb as its heritage sites while Israel is excluding them from its own list.

A government committee headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is meeting Tuesday morning to decide on adding 10 more sites to Israel’s official list of heritage sites, but the Bible-based Patriarchs’ Cave and Rachel’s Tomb are not among them

Rabbi-Professor Daniel Hershkowitz, Science and Technology Minister and head of the Jewish Home party, issued an urgent appeal to Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser that the two sites be included.

The government committee on heritage sites is headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and includes Hershkowitz as a member.

“I am asking you to again review my position that the committee determining heritage sites include Rachel’s Tomb and the Patriarchs' Cave,” the Cabinet minister wrote. “These sites already receive government funds for development and maintenance, and their inclusion will not require a change in budget allocations.” he added.

He stated that excluding the holy sites from the list would be totally unacceptable by the public.

I think you may be referring to Joseph’s tomb. From Wiki:

The Palestinians targeted the site, burning the yeshiva to the ground, incinerating its books and painting the dome green, an act which led to retaliation with Jewish vandalism of three mosques in Tiberias and Jaffa.[16] After the death of an Israeli border policeman [142] the head of the IDF’s southern command, Brigadier-General Yom-Tov Samia, threatened to resign if the government kept control of the tomb, since retaining control of it was ‘patently illegal.’ Prime Minister Ehud Barak eventually complied with the request and the site was handed over to the Palestinian police on October 7, 2000.[18] Israeli newspapers framed the return of the site as a humiliating defeat for the nation.[143] The tomb was pillaged and torched by Palestinian protesters hours after its evacuation.[144] The next morning, the bullet-riddled body of rabbi Hillel Lieberman of Elon Moreh, a cousin of Senator Joseph Lieberman, was found on the outskirts of Nablus, where he had gone to check damage to the tomb.[145] Joseph’s Tomb embodied a key Zionist theme: the return from exile to one’s homeland, and the Palestinian assault has been interpreted as challenging the credibility of claims to the site.[146] The PA began to repair it the next day.[147] Palestinian spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi claimed that Judaism’s connection with the tomb was ‘fabricated’.[148] The mayor of Nablus Ghassan Shakaa was reported as saying Jewish worshippers would not be permitted to pray there until an international organization or third party determines whether the site is holy to Moslems or Jews.[149]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph’s_Tomb#Since_2000

This is nothing new, either. At one point, the Mandate determined that the Western Wall was part of an Islamic holy site, and had a sergeant standing guard with a whip on Yom Kippur to punish any Jooo! who dared blow a ram’s horn at the end of services there. That an Israeli government should do the same in Shechem (Nablus), however, is unforgivable. Another one we owe Ehud Barak (If I were a Pali, yibadibadibadibadiba dumb).

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Thanks Eleutheria5. ...excluding the holy sites from the list would be totally unacceptable by the public. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.