The text, referred to as the "Jerusalem resolution," is part of a push by the Palestinian Authority and the Arab states across the UN system to rebrand Judaism's most holy site and as an exclusively Islamic one.
The United States, which opposed the text, said that the omission of inclusive terminology for the site sacred to three faiths was of "real and serious concern."
"It is morally, historically and politically wrong for members of this body to support language that denies" both the Jewish and Christian connections to the Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif.
The US has not been the only country to voice concern over the lack of inclusive language. In an attempt to ensure support for the resolution, its authors had made some small amendments since the UNGA last approved the resolution in 2018 by 148-11. That text referenced al-Haram al-Sharif twice, one in the action portion of the resolution and once in the introduction.
This time, the phrase al-Haram al-Sharif was mentioned only once in the introduction. Despite this shift, support for the resolution dropped, with the number of countries that abstained growing from 14 to 31.
Three years ago, all the European countries supported the text, this year a number of them changes their votes.
Hungary and the Czech Republic opposed the resolution, while Albania, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
A British envoy said the "the resolution adopted today refers to the holy sites in Jerusalem in purely Islamic terms without recognizing the Jewish terminology of Temple Mount.
"The UK has made clear for many years that we disagree with this approach and while we welcome the removal of the majority of these references, we are
disappointed that we were unable to find a solution to the final reference
"The UK has therefore moved our vote today from a 'yes' to an 'abstention.' If the unbalanced reference had been removed, the UK would have been ready and willing to vote 'yes,'" the British envoy said.
