Even the dead pose a "demographic threat" in Occupied Jerusalem

In stable democratic states there are laws that protect historic sites against confiscation or destruction. Governments allocate funds from state budgets for their maintenance. However, in Israel such normal procedures do not apply when it comes to maintaining Islamic heritage sites. To the contrary, Muslim sanctities all over Palestine have suffered systematic destruction at the hands of the Israeli governments, and the Mamilla cemetery, where there are now only 5% of the tombs left^[1], is no exception.

On 4th August 2010, Israeli bulldozers destroyed 15 tombs in the cemetery. The machinery and bulldozers, belonging to the Israeli municipal authorities in Jerusalem, worked under police protection. The cemetery located in the central Mamilla area of Jerusalem two kilometers from Bab al-Khalil (Jaffa Gate) and estimated at approximately two hundred acres, is believed to be the most esteemed Muslim graveyard in all of historic Palestine. It has around 70,000 graves including those of noble companions of Prophet Mohammed, famous clerics, judges, scholars, city governors, custodians and sheikhs of al-Aqsa Mosque as well as a great number of residents of Jerusalem and hundreds of Salah al Din Al Ayubi’s soldiers and many of his senior generals and administrators who died in the battle for Jerusalem were buried in Mamilla.^[2]

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The cemetery has suffered systematic destruction by the Israeli authorities since 1948. “With only 8% of the cemetery area left, new Israeli plans are being designed to eliminate this Moslem historical site once and for all.”^[3]

Thousands of grave markers were destroyed when the cemetery came under the authority of the Israeli Department of Absentee Landholders. Records show that a handful of broken grave markers were found in 1967 when Israel occupied east Jerusalem, but almost none of them now exist.^[4]

When Israel annexed the cemetery in 1967, they turned a large part of it into a park which became known as “Independence Park”. The municipality also designated part of the cemetery to public institutions and permitted the excavation of tombs to build roads and lay cables.
 
A recent report issued by the Sector of Palestine and the Arab Occupied Territories in the Arab League, sited the continuous desecration of both the cemetery and other Islamic monuments as an example of the ugly face of Israel and the violations it commits in the occupied Jerusalem.

The report, which is based on documented information obtained from the Institute of Applied Research in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Islamic Heritage, referred to Israel’s persistence in its efforts to seize the cemetery after it occupied western Jerusalem in 1948 by changing the parameters of the cemetery and obliterating all traces of it.

According the report, in 1985 and 1987, the Israeli authorities carried out aggressive drilling to extend the sewage system and to expand a parking lot, destroying dozens of graves and scattering the bones of the dead everywhere.^[5]

In 2000, excavations in the cemetery were carried out by the Israeli Electricity Company which also scattered the bones of the dead across the ground. In 2002, the local authority announced its intention to build an Israeli court in the cemetery.^[6]
 
Most recently, an Israeli court ruling endorsed a plan to build a museum on part of Mamilla, which has led to waves of anger among Palestinians, Muslims and Christians as well as prominent Jewish figures. The Israeli Supreme Court has issued a permit to resume construction of the so-called “Museum of Tolerance” by the US based Wiesenthal Center. Construction of the museum was ordered to freeze in 2006 following complaints by Islamic organisations. The court has since backed the government plan on the basis that the cemetery was confiscated according to the Law of Absentee Landholders and is therefore no longer sacred and can be treated like any other land.
 
Palestinians believe that the court was influenced by Israeli efforts to erase all Arab and Islamic features of Jerusalem. Supporters of the project claim that there were no objections when part of the cemetery was turned into a car park in the 1960s; a judgment that has been accepted by the Israeli court. However, Palestinians have argued that the cark park was built at the time when the Palestinian population was subject to military rule and had few legal rights.^[7]
 
In response to the claim that the Muslim authority at the time approved the building of the car park, Qadi Ahmad Natour, President of the Sharia High Court of Appeals in the State of Israel, stated that the Qadi of Yaffo, who backed the project, was “a figure with no real standing in the Muslim community of Palestine and had been convicted of fraud on two occasions.”^[8]
 
Meanwhile, calls for intervention to save the cemetery containing the remains of the Companions of Prophet Mohammed have come from local Palestinians leaders.

Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement in the 1948 Palestinian territories, considered the court’s decision as a declaration of a global religious war on the Islamic nation and the Arab world. He is also reported to be urging the people of Jerusalem and the relatives of the dead to continue visiting their buried ones in the cemetery to protest the court’s decision.^[9]
 
Sheikh Salah has also called on the people, governments and rulers of Turkey, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Palestine in particular for immediate and rapid intervention to prevent the building of the museum.

On his part, Sheikh Kamal Khatib, deputy head of the Movement has called on President Barack Obama to intervene, saying that the construction was “being done with the money of American Jews.”^[10]

For centuries Jerusalemites continued to use the cemetery as a burial site for their dead up until 1927 when the Muslim Supreme Council decided to preserve it as a historic site, “In accordance with this decision, the Council continued to maintain the cemetery, look after its grounds and keep the tombs in a well maintained condition.”^[11]
 
In an attempt to contain public condemnation for the destruction of around 300 Muslim gravestones, the municipality of Jerusalem announced that the tombs were fake and had been set up in a bid to snatch government land.^[12]
 
The head of Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage cautioned people about cooperating with the project stressing that the Arab and Islamic peoples would not be satisfied with the Israeli decision, even if they grant them all the inducements of the world.^[13]

Sheikh Salah questioned the justification of Israel’s decision to deport the dead from the graveyard and wonder whether “the dead have become a demographic threat?!”
 
The Archbishop of the Roman Orthodox Church, Bishop Attallah Hanna, condemned the court’s ruling and appealed to all the free voices of justice, peace, and human rights, to immediately intervene and support the Palestinian people^[14].

“Violations of graves is inconsistent with all human and moral standards” said Bishop Attallah Hanna, “this is the real face of the occupation” he added.

The museum is to be built in an area of more than 21,000 square meters. It will be built with Jerusalem stones, glass and blue titanium and will be officially called: “Centre for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance”.

Despite an official complaint about the desecration of Mamilla by Kuwait on 21st May, submitted to the international community on behalf of the Arab group at the United Nations and calls for urgent intervention, none of the UN agencies have taken any action.
 
The irony is that the advocates of the project have long campaigned to build a museum of “tolerance” on the remains and tombs of generations of Muslims, including graves of the prophet’s companions, and other highly respected individuals.

Both Muslims and Christians believe that the project forms part of Israel’s strategic plan to judaise Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. Advocates of the “Museum of Tolerance” project attempt to use as justification the claim that there was no protest against part of the cemetery being turned into a parking lot in the past. However, this argument is false and since the early 1960s, there have been numerous protests.  In addition, the fact that people did not protest in the past does not change the fact that what had happened then and what is happening now is a desecration of a holy site that is the collective heritage of not just Palestinians but Muslims the world over. 

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[1] http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=297                                                           
[2] http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=297
[3] http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=297
[4] http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=297
[5] http://www.champress.net/index.php?q=ar/Article/view/61023
[6] http://www.champress.net/index.php?q=ar/Article/view/61023
[7] http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/3599316-jews-and-muslims-unite-against-museum-on-cemetery-site?r=1
[8] http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/3599316-jews-and-muslims-unite-against-museum-on-cemetery-site?r=1
[9] http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1225200839248&pagename=Zone-Arabic-News%2FNWALayout#ixzz0wBvuD0cx
[10] http://www.haaretz.com/news/arabs-rally-against-construction-of-jerusalem-museum-on-muslim-cemetery-1.256805
[11] http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=297
[12] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gtT5BQ6NyRWT1w36pkmHcQAEf6DQ
[13] http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1225200839248&pagename=Zone-Arabic-News%2FNWALayout#ixzz0wBvuD0cx
[14] http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1225200839248&pagename=Zone-Arabic-News%2FNWALayout#ixzz0wBvuD0cx

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