The United Nations should not erase 4,000 years of historic Jewish connection to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem just to score a political point, Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu told told the international organization's Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during a meeting on Monday in New York, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Netanyahu is in the US this week for talks on the peace process. On Monday he met with US Vice President Joe Biden and addressed the Federation of American Jewish Communities in New Orleans. .
“The Jewish nation has had a deep connection to these two sites for close to 4,000 years,” Netanyahu told Ban. He urged him to change a recent statement by the Paris-based United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which said that the two Jewish biblical sites were mosques and called them an integral part of “occupied Palestinian territory.”
“More than a billion people recognize this connection which is documented in the Bible,” Netanyahu said. Don’t “distort historical facts” for political gain, he said.
“It will only harm the UN’s standing and the manner in which serious people treat it around the world,” he added.
Israel has said earlier this week it would not cooperate with UNESCO decisions and actions with regard to these sites.
Ban Ki-moon for his part said after his meeting with Netanyahu that it is "vital to break the current diplomatic stalemate," between Israel and the Palestinians "resume negotiations and produce results."
He expressed concern about Israel's announcement of new construction plans in east-Jerusalem, a UN spokesman said.
"The secretary general emphasized that it was vital to break the current diplomatic stalemate, resume negotiations and produce results,'" the UN spokesman said in a statement after the talks, held just hours after Israel approved more the construction than 1,300 new homes in east Jerusalem.
Netanyahu is to wrap up his US tour on Thursday with a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters on Tuesday that the United States is "deeply disappointed by the announcement of advanced planning for new housing units in sensitive areas of east Jerusalem" and that Clinton will raise the topic.
On Monday, in his New Orleans speech to Jewish leaders, Netanyahu urged Palestinians to negotiate “without conditions.”
"If you want to live peacefully next to us come and negotiate peace with us.”
But his address was mainly focused on Iran, saying that “a nuclear Iran is the greatest threat to Israel and to the world.”
“The only time that Iran suspended its nuclear program was for a brief period in 2003 when the regime believed it faced a credible threat of military action against it,” he said.
“If the international community, led by the United States, hopes to stop Iran’s nuclear program without resorting to military action, it will have to convince Iran that it is prepared to take such action.”
Netanyahu expressed the same message to Vice President Joe Biden.
But his call for a "credible military threat" drew a swift response from the U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said international sanctions were "biting more deeply" than the Iranians anticipated.
"I disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions that it needs to," Gates said in Australia on Monday. "At this point we continue to believe that the political and economic approach that we are taking is in fact having an impact on Iran."
Netanyahu also stressed that “the old hatred against the Jewish people is now focused against the Jewish state.”
“If in the past Jews were demonized, singled out or denied the rights that were automatically granted to others, today in many quarters Israel is demonized, singled out and denied the rights automatically granted to other nations, first and foremost the right of self-defense.”
During his speech before the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans, Netanyahu was interrupted at least five times by young hecklers.
The demonstrators, who shouted “Stop the occupation!” where taken from the hall by security teams.