UNESCO puts 4th century Gaza monastery on list of endangered World Heritage sites

The Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, has been put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in danger due to the war in Gaza, the body says.

UNESCO said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities and cited the “imminent threats” it faced.

“It’s the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context,”  Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, tells AFP, referring to the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught in southern Israel.

In December, the UNESCO Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict decided to grant the site “provisional enhanced protection” — the highest level of immunity established by the 1954 Hague Convention.

At the time, UNESCO said it was “already concerned about the state of conservation of sites, before October 7, due to the lack of adequate policies to protect heritage and culture” in Gaza.