Collateral Damage

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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held an “extraordinary session” in Paris this week focusing on protecting world heritage sites in Lebanon following growing concern from prominent archeologists, academics, and Lebanese officials about their destruction from intensifying Israeli strikes, Art Forum reported.

During the meetings, UNESCO officials said they will add 34 Lebanese cultural properties to the International List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection and provide funding and technical assistance to ensure the security of the sites, which have “outstanding value to humanity,” according to UNESCO.

As a result, these sites will receive “immunity against attack and use for military purposes,” according to UNESCO. Non-compliance would constitute “serious violations” of the 1954 Hague Convention on cultural heritage in conflict and could lead to prosecution.

For more than two millennia, the Roman temples and other structures at Baalbek in eastern Lebanon have stood as some of the finest examples of Roman architecture anywhere in the world, the BBC wrote.

But earlier this month, a car park just a few feet away from the UNESCO World Heritage site was hit by an Israeli air strike.

The strike, which left the Roman temples and other structures untouched but destroyed a centuries-old Ottoman building, highlighted what archaeologists say is the risk of irreparable damage to historical sites across Lebanon. That’s because the war between Israel and Hezbollah, which intensified starting in September, has moved beyond the targeting of southern Lebanon, Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley, traditionally Hezbollah strongholds, to threaten Baalbek and other areas.

That has set off panic among archeologists.

“Baalbek is the major Roman site in Lebanon – you couldn’t replace it if someone bombed it,” Graham Philip, an archaeology professor at Durham University in the UK, told the BBC. “It would be a huge loss. It would be a crime.”

Another site at risk is Tyre, a major port of the Phoenician Empire around 2,500 years ago, which also hosts Roman ruins. It has been a target of airstrikes repeatedly in the past few weeks.

UNESCO hopes that this move not only enshrines the protection of the sites but also “helps send a signal to the entire international community of the urgent need to protect these sites,” reported Radio France Internationale.