On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, as part of a visit to France, met with Unesco Director General Audrey Azoulay. During the meeting, Eli Cohen “raised the question of Israel’s return to Unesco”, to which Audrey Azoulay replied that “the decision on Israel’s return belongs to the Israeli authorities”, a Unesco diplomat told Agence France Presse.
Israel withdrew from Unesco in 2018, hours after the United States, which under Donald Trump accused the UN body of “anti-Israeli bias”.
Israel is considering a potential return to Unesco, the United Nations organization for culture, education and science, which it left in 2018, along with the United States, according to French press reports.
Unesco is based in Paris. On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, as part of a visit to France, met with Unesco Director General Audrey Azoulay. During the meeting, Eli Cohen “raised the question of Israel’s return to Unesco”, to which Audrey Azoulay replied that “the decision on Israel’s return belongs to the Israeli authorities”, a Unesco diplomat told Agence France Presse.
Israel withdrew from Unesco in 2018, hours after the United States, which under Donald Trump accused the UN body of “anti-Israeli bias”. “Unesco has become a theater of the absurd, where history is distorted instead of preserved,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained at the time to justify the decision.
“Since 2009, Unesco has passed 71 resolutions condemning Israel, compared with 2 for all the other countries in the world. It’s scandalous,” he said.
Unesco had provoked Israeli fury in July 2017 by including the Old City of Hebron on the list of World Heritage in Danger and characterizing Hebron, in the West Bank, as an Islamic city, even though Jews claim a 4,000-year presence there.
The United States announced in June their intention to return to Unesco.
During his Paris visit, Cohen also met with his French counterpart Catherine Colonna and asked France to help stop Hezbollah ‘provocations’ at the Lebanese border
“France is a strategic ally of Israel,” the Israeli FM tweeted.
“Excellent meeting with the French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna. We discussed the fight against the Iranian nuclear program, the expansion of the Abraham Accords, and I asked her to use France’s influence in Lebanon to stop Hezbollah‘s provocations that endanger regional stability,” Cohen said in a Twitter post after the meeting.
“France is a strategic ally of Israel, we discussed expanding cooperation between the countries, and I thanked her for her activity against antisemitism and for the benefit of the Jewish community,” the minister continued.
The Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group has carried out a series of hostile acts at the border with Israel in recent months, including setting up a manned outpost in April a few meters on the Israeli side of the Blue Line but beyond the Israeli security fence. The position, located across from an IDF post, was reportedly manned by three to eight armed terrorists.
Paris has generally good relations with Lebanon dating back to when France held the League of Nations Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon in 1923-1946.
Cohen’s one-day visit to France came a day before the United Nations Security Council was scheduled to discuss the deteriorating situation at the Israeli-Lebanese border ahead of a vote next month to renew the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) for another year.
UNIFIL was established in 1978 to confirm Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon following a military incursion that came in response to PLO terrorism. After 2006’s Second Lebanon War between Hezbollah and Israel, UNIFIL’s mandate was expanded to monitor the cessation of hostilities.