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For MK Talab al-Sana of United Arab List-Ta'al: "The government's decision attests to its cynical criteria that would include places holy to Muslims and Christians," besides being a thinly veiled way to expropriate more Palestinian land in defiance of international law.
Israeli extremist elements praised the decision as did Knesset hard-liners.
A Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) press release condemned it, saying it "was taken on the eve of the 16th anniversary of the mass killing of 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque by an Israeli settler, Baroch Goldstein, on 25 February 1994."
It also violated international law, including:
-- the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict defining it as "movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people;"
-- its Article 2 calling for "the protection of cultural property (to include) the safeguarding of and respect for such property;" and
-- Article 9 of its Second Protocol prohibiting "any illicit export, other removal or transfer of ownership of cultural property."
-- Fourth Geneva calls "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly," a grave Convention breach.
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