by Jonathan Cook, Al-Akhbar English
– The discovery of a rare aerial photo of Jerusalem in the 1930s, taken
by a Zeppelin, has provided the long-sought after proof that when Israel
occupied the Old City in 1967 it secretly destroyed an important mosque
that dated from the time of Saladin close to the al-Aqsa mosque.
The destruction of the Sheikh Eid mosque
– in an area widely considered to be the most sensitive site in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict – revives questions about Israel’s
continuing abuse of Islamic holy places under its control.
The issue has been in the spotlight
recently because of a growing number of arson and vandalism attacks by
Jewish extremists on mosques in Jerusalem and the West Bank, in what are
termed “price-tag” attacks designed to dissuade the Israeli government
from making diplomatic concessions to the Palestinians.
Following the torching by Jewish
settlers of a mosque near Ramallah two weeks ago, Dan Halutz, a former
military chief of staff, admitted there was no political will to find
the culprits. “If we wanted, we could catch them, and when we want to,
we will,” he told Army Radio.
The question of whether Jerusalem’s
Sheikh Eid mosque had survived up until modern times had been the
subject of heated debates between Palestinian and Israeli scholars.
The discovery of its location is not of
only historic and academic interest. Earlier this year, before the
aerial photo was unearthed, development at the spot where the mosque
once stood led to damage of what was left of the building below ground,
archaeologists now admit.
Israel’s Antiquities Authority, its
chief archaeological institution, dug up the mosque’s remaining
foundations and disinterred a human skeleton, believed to be Sheikh Eid
himself.
The site of the mosque is next to the
Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), a raised compound of Islamic holy
places that includes the al-Aqsa mosque and is flanked on one side by
the Western Wall, a major Jewish prayer site.
Control over the Haram al-Sharif is
contested by Israel, which believes that the mosques are built over two
Jewish temples destroyed long ago. There is growing pressure from Jewish
religious groups to be allowed to pray on the Haram al-Sharif, and some
extremists have threatened to blow up the mosques so that they can
build a third temple.
A provocative visit in 2000 to the site
by Ariel Sharon, then leader of Israel’s opposition, backed by more than
1,000 police triggered the second intifada.
The remains of Sheikh Eid mosque were
destroyed during excavations carried out as Israel prepares the area
next to the Haram al-Sharif for the construction of a large visitor
centre.
The plan is part of a series of changes
by Israel to the area near the Western Wall that has been fuelling
tensions with Palestinians. The alterations violate international law
because Jerusalem’s Old City is occupied territory.
Benjamin Kedar, vice-president of
Israel’s National Academy of Sciences, who discovered the old photo
after searching archives in Germany, called the treatment of Sheikh Eid
mosque “an archaeological crime.”
The mosque, which originally served as
an Islamic school, built by Malik al-Afdil, one of Saladin’s sons, is
said to have been one of only three such buildings remaining in
Jerusalem from that period.
Its provenance and location are
described in a 15th-century document. After the burial of its most
famous preacher, Sheikh Eid, two centuries later, it became a major
pilgrimage site for Muslims.
The mosque, it now emerges, was
destroyed during the wholesale levelling of the Mughrabi quarter of the
Old City – a war crime that has been largely overlooked by historians –
in the immediate wake of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.
Under cover of dark, Israel sent in
bulldozers to clear the area, forcing nearly 1,000 Palestinian residents
out so that a wide prayer plaza could be created in front of the
Western Wall.
The plaza became the nucleus for the
re-establishment of an enlarged Jewish quarter in the Old City, which is
gradually encroaching on the Muslim and Christian quarters through the
activities of settlers and armed guards assigned by the Israeli
authorities to protect them.
The visitor center is the latest plan in
a long-running campaign by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, who is in charge
of the Western Wall, to strengthen Israel’s hold on the area around the
Haram al-Sharif, in what is seen by many Palestinians as an attempt to
bolster Israeli claims to sovereignty over the compound of mosques.
The rabbi’s Western Wall Heritage
Foundation oversees the Western Wall tunnels, which were opened in 1996
during current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous premiership.
The opening sparked violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli
security forces that led to dozens of deaths.
The Heritage Foundation is also
attempting to relocate the Mughrabi bridge, a ramp now used chiefly by
non-Muslims and Israeli police to reach the al-Aqsa compound, to further
expand the prayer plaza in front of the Western Wall.
The visitor centre, which would be built
close to the Mughrabi bridge, has aroused opposition from a group of
dissident Israeli archaeologists. Yoram Tzafrir a professor at Hebrew
University, recently told the Haaretz newspaper: “It might be said that
the demolition of the Mughrabi quarter in 1967 was necessary … to allow
masses to reach the Western Wall – not to build a new [visitor]
building.”
The Heritage Foundation has justified
its activities by saying that excavations destroying Islamic history are
necessary to unearth older, Jewish archaeological remains. In a
statement referring to the Sheikh Eid controversy, it said: “Excavations
in the area of the Western Wall are intended to reach the earliest
levels possible. Clearly this cannot be done without destroying later
periods, whatever they may be.”
The historic and current abuses of the
Sheikh Eid mosque are reflected in Israel’s repeated dismal scores in
international surveys on religious freedom.
In 2010 the US State Department
published a report placing Israel in the same category as Afghanistan,
Iraq, Iran and Sudan. “Non-Jewish holy sites do not enjoy legal
protection under [Israel’s 1967 Protection of Holy Sites Law] because
the government does not recognize them as official holy sites,” the
report stated.
The 1967 law stipulates a punishment of
seven years’ imprisonment for anyone found guilty of desecrating a holy
site, and five years for impeding access to a holy site. But Israel has
given such status only to Jewish places of worship.
The State Department’s findings were
confirmed last year in a freedom of religion index organized by US
academics at Binghamton University, who awarded Israel a zero score.
The treatment of Sheikh Eid mosque has
echoes of a current and more prominent dispute close by, in West
Jerusalem, where Israel has approved a plan by the California-based
Simon Wiesenthal Centre to build a Museum of Tolerance over the ancient
Muslim cemetery of Mamilla, which includes graves believed to be those
of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions.
Israeli media reported in 2008 that more
than 100 skeletons had been unearthed and mistreated in excavations to
prepare the site for construction work. The building of the museum has
been delayed by financial problems caused by the global economic
downturn.
While these high-profile cases have made
headlines, violations of religious freedoms for the 1.3 million
Palestinian Muslims living under occupation, who have citizenship, have
gained far less attention.
The core grievance dates to Israel’s
creation in 1948, when all land and property held in trust for the
Muslim community was confiscated inside the borders of the newly
established Jewish state. These properties – donated by generations of
Palestinians to a waqf, or religious endowment – comprised not only holy
sites and cemeteries but also schools, public buildings, shops and
farmland.
After 1948, all of the waqf’s holdings,
which constituted a tenth of the territory of the Holy Land, were seized
by the state and, along with property belonging to more than 750,000
Palestinian refugees, passed to an official known as the Custodian of
Absentee Property.
Only the mosques in the 120 Palestinian
towns and villages that survived Israel’s establishment have continued
to operate, though under strict supervision. Israel, which pays the
salaries of mosque employees, controls all appointments and monitors
sermons.
Some 500 other villages, which were
emptied of their Palestinian population in 1948, have been razed, often
along with any local mosques or churches.
In cities that are now almost
exclusively Jewish, such as Tel Aviv, mosques and cemeteries were simply
developed over. In one notorious incident, the large Abdul Nabi
cemetery was passed to a development company in the 1950s and a
five-star hotel and several housing complexes for Jewish immigrants
built over it.
Most of the mosques that remained
standing in the otherwise-destroyed villages have been desecrated,
according to a survey undertaken by the Nazareth-based Human Rights
Association in 2004. It found that these mosques, as well as Islamic
shrines, had been made inaccessible, including to internal refugees
living nearby.
Some had been turned over to Jewish
immigrants. For example, Caesarea, a former Palestinian coastal village
that was transformed after 1948 into a wealthy Jewish community that is
home to Benjamin Netanyahu, converted the Bushnak mosque into a
restaurant.
Other prominent mosques in former
Palestinian villages have been put to use as bars, night clubs, art
galleries, shops, animal pens, grain stores and synagogues.
There is little that can be done to
prevent such desecration in most cases because Israel’s 1978 Antiquities
Law offers no protection to buildings dating after 1700.
Meanwhile, other, older mosques have
been declared closed military zones, leaving them derelict. The
beautiful Ghabisiya mosque in northern historical Palestine is fenced
off and enveloped in razor-wire, while the Hittin mosque, built by
Saladin in 1187 to celebrate his victory at the Battle of Hittin, close
to the Sea of Galilee, has become a crumbling ruin, with refugees living
close by forbidden to repair it.
Over the past 15 years, the two branches
of the Islamic Movement have worked to identify and document the Muslim
holy places that were destroyed and those that survived but are today
off-limits.
It has also antagonised the Israeli
authorities by leading a campaign to restore many of the most important
sites. When the Islamic Movement helped a group of internal refugees
from the former village of Sarafand, on the Mediterranean coast, restore
their mosque in 2000, it was bulldozed overnight in still-unexplained
circumstances.
Even rare successes in the Israeli
courts have made little impact in practice. Last year the Supreme Court
ruled that Beersheba council must use the city’s imposing and recently
restored Grand Mosque as a museum to Islamic culture rather than a
general museum, as the council had planned.
However, in March the Adalah legal
centre for the Arab minority in occupied Palestine, which helped fight
the case, complained to the Israeli attorney-general that the council
had ignored the ruling and was using the mosque to stage an exhibition
on British and Israeli rule in the Negev. It also noted that the council
had staged a wine and beer festival in the mosque’s grounds last year.
Nuri al-Uqbi, a Bedouin activist who has
led a long campaign to try to restore the Grand Mosque to a place of
worship, said: “I felt horrified and furious at this violation of the
mosque’s sanctity. In the mosque there are plastic dolls and models
wearing British and Israeli uniforms, some of them in shorts, among
other exhibits that are irrelevant to Arab-Islamic culture or
tradition.”
Beersheba council has refused to provide
a Muslim place of worship in the city, despite its being home to 1,000
Muslim families and daily drawing many Bedouin visitors from the
surrounding Negev.
Other legal efforts related to waqf
property have also come to nought. In 2007 Palestinians living in the
historic city of Jaffa, now a mixed Jewish-Arab suburb of Tel Aviv,
unsuccessfully petitioned the district court to discover what had
happened to local waqf property.
The government refused to divulge the
information, claiming it “would seriously harm Israel’s foreign
relations”. This was presumed to refer to the damage that might be done
to Israel’s image abroad should it be revealed to what uses the waqf
property had been put.
The case is currently being appealed to the Supreme Court.
However, all the signs are that the
court is unlikely to be sympathetic. In 2009, after a five-year legal
struggle by Adalah, the Supreme Court rejected a petition demanding that
the 1967 Protection of Holy Sites Law specifically include protection
for Islamic sites.
While agreeing that Muslim holy sites
were generally in a “miserable condition”, it said that the matter was
too “sensitive” for it to issue a ruling.
Under pressure from the court, however,
the Israeli government promised to spend $500,000 on the maintenance of
Muslim holy places, a sum that has been widely criticised by the
community as “pitiful.” The money will be allocated by the Israel Lands
Administration, which according to Adalah lawyers, “has done nothing to
prevent the desecration of Muslim holy sites and in many instances
played an active role in their desecration.”
Restrictions on Muslims’ freedom of
worship seem likely to intensify in the months and years ahead. Late
last year Netanyahu gave his backing to a law that would ban mosques
from using loudspeakers to call residents to prayer.
Observing that there had been many
complaints about noise, Netanyahu observed: “The same problem exists in
all European countries, and they know how to deal with it. It’s
legitimate in Belgium; it’s legitimate in France. Why isn’t it
legitimate here? We don’t need to be more liberal than Europe.”
Netanyahu had apparently forgotten that
he was not in Europe and that the Muslims he was talking about are not
immigrants but the native population.
