The United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has passed a resolution declaring the Old City of Hebron in the West Bank, which includes the Tomb of the Patriarchs, as an endangered Palestinian world heritage site.

The decision is the second anti-Israel resolution in a week to emerge from Unesco World Heritage Committee’s 41st annual summit, currently taking place in Krakow, Poland.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said: “This attempt to sever the ties between Israel and Hebron is shameful and offensive, and eliminates Unesco’s last remaining shred of credibility. To disassociate Israel from the burial grounds of the patriarchs and matriarchs of our nation is an ugly display of discrimination, and an act of aggression against the Jewish people.”

However, the Palestinians hailed it as a victory against Israeli and American opposition.

The area under review includes a holy site known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi mosque.

“This vote is a success for a diplomatic battle fought by Palestine on all fronts, in the face of the Israeli and American pressure on the member states … and a failure and a tremendous defeat Israel,” Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said in a statement.

“Despite the aggressive Israeli campaign, spreading lies, distorting and falsifying facts about the Palestinian right, the world recognized our right to register Hebron and the Ibrahimi Mosque under Palestinian sovereignty and on the World Heritage List,” Maliki added.

In the secret ballot, 12 countries voted in favour, three opposed the move and six countries abstained.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald S Lauder on Friday condemned the decision, saying  it was “the latest Palestinian attempt to exploit the UN for political manipulation, and it demonstrates a severe abuse of the emergency mechanism.

“It is disconcerting that Unesco member states have adopted yet another cynical distortion of reality, a subversive attempt to rewrite history and deem the Old City of Hebron as a Muslim-Palestinian site alone while denying its historic and religious importance to Jews and Christians.”