Jerusalem – Israel could reconsider its impending exit from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), depending on the outcome of an Israeli delegation’s participation in the World Heritage Committee session that will be held next week in Bahrain.
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“There are reasons to be optimistic,” said Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama-HaCohen Tuesday. Speaking to the Israel Broadcast Corporation (Kan) Shama-HaCohen added that “if people come to their senses and there are no decisions against Israel made in Bahrain, we would have reason to reconsider at least the pace of leaving or the conditions for leaving the organization.”
Israel notified the UN’s culture and education body last December that it would leave the organization because of the organization’s anti-Israel “biased, one-sided and absurd attitude” surrounding several clashes earlier in the year: In July, the organization’s World Heritage Council accepted a Palestinian request to list the Old City of Hebron, including the Cave of the Patriarchs, as a “Palestinian” world heritage site. The same month, the Council referred to Israel as “the occupying power” in the Old City of Jerusalem.
More recently, however, Mounir Bouchenaki, Director of the Arab Regional Center for World Heritage in Manama, said on June 17 that an Israeli delegation would participate in the UNESCO session in the city later this month.
“An Israeli delegation will visit Bahrain later this month for a UN cultural agency UNESCO meeting in the capital Manama. Any country in the UN has the right to attend the meetings,” he said .
The announcement is the latest indication of warming ties between Israel and Bahrain, as both countries fear Iran’s growing influence in the region. In May, Bahrain Foreign Minister Khalida Khalifa pointed a finger at Iran for attacking Israel from its proxy in Syria, adding that Israel has the right to self-defend.
“As long as Iran continues the current status quo of its forces and rockets operating in the region, then any country — including Israel — has the right to defend itself by eliminating the source of danger,” Khalifa tweeted on his account.
In December an official delegation from the Gulf nation travelled to Israel to spread a message of peace and tolerance from the Bahraini people and from King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.