Mamilla : Chronicle of a Cemetery:

Chronicle of a Cemetery: Museum of Tolerance Planned on Muslim Heritage Site in West Jerusalem

Written by Susanna Mendoza for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Monday, 27 August 2007

The Mamilla Cemetery, its name derived from “Maman Allah,” meaning God's Sanctuary, hides behind dense vegetation at one end of Independence Park in the heart of West Jerusalem.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that it has become a meeting place for the city’s gay community—a secluded location where one can hide from the strict scrutiny of the Holy Land. No matter where one turns in Jerusalem it's impossible to escape the often suffocating weight of religious traditions. It is not surprising then, that the Jerusalemite gay community chose Independence Park, symbolic in its name, as the starting point of the last gay pride in June 2007. The truth is that, with the exception of the gay community and occasionally some absent-minded tourist, very few people come to this cemetery, unknown even to many of the city's citizens.

The Mamilla Cemetery would perhaps still be unknown if some six years ago, the Wiesenthal Center (a Jewish human rights organization) hadn't announced its intentions to build, on the south side of the graveyard, the Museum of Tolerance, with the full support of Jerusalem's Municipality. Commencement of the digging for this museum, which claims to show the "unity and respect between Jewish and people of all traditions," aroused the ire of the Muslim community, particularly when human remains began to be exhumed. "They wouldn't have done this if this was a Jewish cemetery. There are other spaces to build this. It is another political demonstration because they know this is a provocation for us," affirms Dr. Yussuf Nachti, Archeology expert for the office of the Waqf, the Islamic Court in Jerusalem. When asked about the dilapidated condition of the cemetery, the office of the Waqf responded that they are not authorized to work in West Jerusalem, much less to take care of some ruins, no matter how old they are.

Charles Levine, former spokesperson for the Wiesenthal Center, stated that there is no reason for the anger of the Muslim community. “We are building on land handed over by the Municipality of Jerusalem, designated as a public space. Besides, I don't understand why they didn't protest twenty years ago, when a parking lot was built on land from the same graveyard.” In a recent press release, the Wiesenthal Center claimed that the cemetery has not been considered sacred since 1967, when the Muslim Court passed a judgment stating that it had lost its mundras, its sanctity as a place for burials.

With or without sanctity, this cemetery deserves a place in any tourist guidebook, even though it is practically in ruins. It is a wonderful example of Islamic art in Jerusalem, and the last resting place of numerous Muslim personalities from centuries past. If one chooses to venture through the undergrowth and walk among the crumbling tombstones, they will discover that there lies, in a cubical mausoleum complete with a dome, the Mamluk emir Aidughi Kubaki, who was governor of Aleppo and Safed before being exiled to Jerusalem where he was finally buried in the year 1289 C.E. It is one of the few constructions that continue to stand, though badly stained by pollution and graffiti, amongst the more meager hundred or so tombs remaining here. In order to get up close and see the tombstones, one must also step over trash bags, Coca-Cola cans, and the scattered stones from the raided tumuli.

Said, an expert archeologist of Jerusalem, has dedicated part of his career to the study of this cemetery. For him, it is much more than an ancient necropolis; it is a sample of the extensive history of this land. Said explains that there is proof here of a link between the tombstones standing today and the Byzantine origins of the cemetery. Here stood a church called “The Red,” where monks were buried for decades until the Persian invasion of 614 C.E. Only a quarter of the original cemetery now remains: it once extended to what is today the Sheraton Plaza Hotel on King David Street, 600 meters from where it now ends. Most of it vanished after the construction of the Independence Park in 1964, built to commemorate the War of 1948. In the cemetery we can also find the Mamilla Pool, used as a cistern to provide water to the city. It also connects with a bigger pool, called the Sultan’s Pool, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City. “It is a pity that we are losing this place, little by little. It used to be the most important Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, all the families were buried here, and now almost nothing remains of it. No one cares about it,” laments Said, while he removes a bag of chips from a fallen tombstone.

However, the crux of this dispute is not the protection of the graveyard, argues Attorney Shmuel Berkowitz, the Wiesenthal Center's consultant against a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court to stop the construction. Sitting in his office near Jaffa Street, the lawyer explains that the center made public its intentions to build on top of the Mamilla cemetery some ten years ago. “This project was made public a decade ago and back then no one submitted any complaint. The plan of the project was published in the newspapers and it was announced that the architect would be Frank Gehry. Why didn't the Islamic group that is making so much noise in the Tribunal now say anything back then? This is clearly a political opportunity for them which they're trying to profit from.”

The group that took the case to court four years ago was the Israeli Islamic Party, affirming that to build on the site of a cemetery constitutes a sacrilege, because, according to the ruling of the President of the Islamic Court, Sheikh Ahmad Natour, a graveyard never loses its sanctity. Yet Berkowitz disagrees: "We know for sure, and Muslims can not deny it, that the verdict of the Islamic religion is that if there are no burials for thirty to forty years, the place is not holy anymore." To support his argument, Berkowitz refers to Fajer al-Sailai Ibn Ali, the 19th Century religious leader who made this ruling. Furthermore, Berkowitz argues, "in 1964, the Islamic Authority revoked the sanctity of this place in order to justify the construction of the Independence Park. Then there were no problems".

However, Mahmoud Awari, one of the main historians of the city, refutes this point : "After 1948, all the holy places for Islam fell under Israeli hands, as did the Islamic Authority that took care of them. Back then, it was the Israelis who elected the leaders of the court, so it is very probable that the decision to take away the holiness of the Mamilla cemetery was a direct order from the Israeli government."

Meanwhile, construction on the Museum has stopped, awaiting a ruling by the Supreme Court. One hundred and fifty million dollars has been invested in this project, and the nearly year long delay in construction amounts to a considerable financial loss for the Wiesenthal Center, as well as for the Municipality of Jerusalem. This ambitious project was originally seen as a great victory for the Jerusalem Municipality, and at the 2004 ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ehud Olmert were among the distinguished guests. Frank Gehry, who, among other achievements, designed the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, was chosen as the architect of the project, which was planned to be finished in 2009. The museum, once finished, will have an exhibition hall, a library about the Holocaust, and an education center.

One of the reasons this area was chosen was its central location. The project belongs to a plan aiming to revitalize the entire area, which, for many years now, has been deteriorating into one of Jerusalem's poorest neighborhoods. Also included in the plan to inject more money into this area is the construction of an exclusive mall and luxury flats. The area will be called the Mamilla Complex, and will, the planners hope, encourage families to go for walks here. Why allow some old bones, who no one remembers any more, to interfere in such a project?

Only a few hundred meters separate this opulent project from East Jerusalem, where the Palestinian population of the city lives. What will happen when Palestinian residents want to go for a walk through Mamilla?

Dr. Nachti believes that this is just another measure to separate the two sides—West Jerusalem, the Jewish side, and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian side. Whether it is true that the Mamilla Complex will create another strife ridden barrier, it is unlikely to be within the reach of many Palestinian residents, for whom the level of poverty is almost fifty percent more than among Jewish citizens.

Beneath the sociopolitical debate and conflict, the Mamilla cemetery languishes in oblivion. The buried soldiers of Saladin, who reconquered Jerusalem from the Crusaders, have become a bother and it has been a long time since anyone came to mourn the dead in this cemetery. Who would have thought the great Kubaki would be involved in such an earthly debate? In a city as ethnically and religiously diverse as Jerusalem, in the intricate web of vulnerabilities of the city, nothing is trivial and everything ends up having a political, social or historical foundation which emerges at the slightest touch. The Wiesenthal Center has discovered an obstacle more complicated than even Jerusalem's topography, and now finds itself engaged in a conflict whose ramifications extend far beyond its own project, to the very foundations of urban development. Even with Arnold Schwarzenegger on their side, they are facing a hard battle.