Contested Heritage, Symbolic Recognition

This book, focusing on the period from the 1950s to the early 1980s, retraces UNESCO’s growing involvement in the conservation of Jerusalem's Old City and the diplomatic struggles that culminated in the 1981 inscription of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls on the World Heritage List and, one year later, on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Far from being a purely technical process, inscription on the List became a means through which competing claims of sovereignty and historical legitimacy were articulated by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians. By examining expert missions, international debates and the emergence of the World Heritage framework, the study reveals how the language of »universal heritage« gradually became part of the political vocabulary used to advance claims over Jerusalem. At the same time, the book also shows how debates over Jerusalem's heritage exposed fractures within UNESCO’s universalist ethos, raising fundamental questions about the neutrality of culture and expertise, as well as about the global governance of cultural heritage.