Israeli court to discuss request to demolish more graves in ancient cemetery

[ 20/10/2010 - 09:41 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Israeli Magistrates Court will hold Wednesday a crucial hearing to assess a request by the occupation state’s Jerusalem municipality and the Israeli Land Authority (ILA) to demolish around 220 more graves in the historical Ma’manullah cemetery in Jerusalem.

The session will be attended by cemetery keepers Sami Rizqullah Abu Mukh, Mustafa Abu Zuhra, and Aqsa Foundation attorney Mohammed Sulaiman Ighbariya, and Palestinian civilians. A picket will also be held outside the court.

The Israeli municipality in Jerusalem destroyed two months back more than 300 graves in the Ma’manullah cemetery under a decision by the Magistrates Court, after the Aqsa Foundation carried out works costing NIS 400,000 to restore around 1,000 graves vulnerable to Israeli vandalism and erosion at the site.

Despite a temporary order to discontinue grave excavations, Israel’s Jerusalem municipality and the ILA lobbied to the court to dig up 220 more graves at the site, alleging that the graves are “fictitious”.

The Aqsa Foundation for Endowments and Heritage assured that all of the graves in the Ma’manullah graveyard are Muslim graves that were built between the Islamic conquest of the area until the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948.

The foundation added that the excavations are a crime against the dead, civilization, and history and a blatant violation of the sanctity of the Ma’manullah cemetery.

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