Just a few dollars more

Also from Deutsche Welle (DW - http://www.dw.de/ ), Germany's international broadcaster, is an interesting story about the so-called Palestinian Authority's attempt to hijack Christian sites to its own nefarious ends which can be found at DW's page here - http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16047000,00.html .

The World Heritage Committee of UNESCO has opened its annual conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, facing a contested Palestinian bid to get recognition for Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.

The application for one of Christianity's holiest sites - among 33 sites seeking approval - was put on the two-week conference's agenda despite a negative evaluation by the United Nation's Council on Monuments and Sites.

A report by council assessors issued last week said that Palestinian authorities had failed to make a full archeological preservation survey of the building that was erected over the presumed birthplace of Jesus in the 4th century.

Officials for the Palestinian Authority, which obtained admission to the UN's education, scientific and cultural agency in a 107-14 vote last October, accuse Israel and its ally the United States of applying influence to obtain a "biased" report on Bethlehem's major tourist attraction.

Palestinian negotiations with Israel on terms for an internationally recognized future state of Palestine have been frozen since 2008.

Of course, DW's inclusion of that last sentence is obviously meant to gently guide the reader to assume that everything is Israel's fault and that really this is just an innocent little application from an oppressed people just trying to help their Christian bretheren (as if!). The nub, the crux if you will, of the matter comes later in the article:

...The committee, which is made up of representatives from 21 UNESCO members, also has powers to grant subsidies for repairs of heritage sites...

Ah-ha, now we have it, don't we? This is just another attempt to bilk the UN out of even more money that can then be diverted into the pockets of the deeply corrupt West Bank so-called administration - nothing would ever get spent on the Church in Bethlehem, that's for sure, but it would be interesting, and would provide us with a little light comic relief, to listen to the excuses that the Arabs would come up with for non-compliance when the Committee finally got around to asking them where the money went.

Then again, we've heard it all before, haven't we?