The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution 129-11 on Wednesday, that disavowed Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and called it solely by its Muslim name of al-Haram al-Sharif.
The text, referred to as the “Jerusalem resolution,” is part of a push by the Palestinian Authority and the Arab states across the UN system to rebrand Judaism’s most holy site and as an exclusively Islamic one.
The United States, which opposed the text, said that the omission of inclusive terminology for the site sacred to three faiths was of “real and serious concern.”
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“It is morally, historically and politically wrong for members of this body to support language that denies” both the Jewish and Christian connections to the Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif.
Jewish man prays at the Temple Mount in front of the Dome of the RockJEREMY SHARON
The US has not been the only country to voice concern over the lack of inclusive language. In an attempt to ensure support for the resolution, its authors had made some small amendments since the UNGA last approved the resolution in 2018 by 148-11. That text referenced al-Haram al-Sharif twice, one in the action portion of the resolution and once in the introduction.
This time, the phrase al-Haram al-Sharif was mentioned only once in the introduction. Despite this shift, support for the resolution dropped, with the number of countries that abstained growing from 14 to 31.
Three years ago, all the European countries supported the text, this year a number of them changes their votes.
Hungary and the Czech Republic opposed the resolution, while Albania, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia abstained.
A British envoy said the “the resolution adopted today refers to the holy sites in Jerusalem in purely Islamic terms without recognizing the Jewish terminology of Temple Mount.
“The UK has made clear for many years that we disagree with this approach and while we welcome the removal of the majority of these references, we are disappointed that we were unable to find a solution to the final reference.
“The UK has therefore moved our vote today from a ‘yes’ to an ‘abstention.’ If the unbalanced reference had been removed, the UK would have been ready and willing to vote ‘yes,'” the British envoy said.
“This should not be misunderstood as a reflection of a change in UK policy toward Jerusalem. Instead, it is an important signal of our commitment to recognizing the history of Jerusalem to the three monotheistic religions,” he said.
The EU took a middle-of-the-road stance, in which it welcomed amendments the PA and the Arab groups made to reduce the annual number of some 20 resolutions on Israel which it presents to the UNGA for approval.
“The EU reiterates that whenever referring to the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif in the Jerusalem resolution both terms, ie, Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif should be used,” an EU representative said.
The same is true for any text relating to Jerusalem, the EU envoy explained.
“The EU calls on all sides not to deny the historical ties of other religions to the city of Jerusalem and its holy places, thus trying to delegitimize their history,” the EU envoy said.
In spite of his words, a fair number of EU member states approved the text, including Belgium, France, Spain and Italy.
The Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour thanked those who support the Jerusalem text, noting that it was “an appropriate and needed resolution to give hope and support to our people.” It pushed back at attempts to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a “religious confrontation,” Mansour said.
He noted that it relied on language on Jerusalem which had already been approved in UN Security Council resolutions.
He called on the UN to accept Palestine as a member state and to hold Israel accountable for its refusal to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines so that a two-state resolution to the conflict can be implemented.
“We will never accept to continue living under occupation in an apartheid system, we deserve freedom and dignity in our homeland.”
