..RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinian Authority says it will seek to have additional religious West Bank sites recognized by UNESCO as endangered World Heritage sites.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki named a site holy to Jews and Muslims in Hebron where biblical patriarchs and their wives are buried, and Mount Gerizim near Nablus.

Last week, UNESCO approved Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity as an endangered site in a move Palestinians hailed as a key step toward statehood. The United States and Israel dismissed it as cynical politicization of the cultural body.

Any why wouldn’t they, since UNESCO has already demonstrated that their decisions concerning PA requests for designations will be made without regard to the opinions of UNESCO’s own experts concerning whether designation is appropriate?

And, lest anyone be confused about what is really at play here, the PA’s foreign minister inadvertently lets the proverbial cat out of the bag:

Malki said the church’s recognition was the start of a “long term project.”

The long-term project, I am quite certain, has nothing to do with actually fixing or maintaining these sites and far more to do with the “continuing struggle”.