The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates and the Chief Islamic Justice, Mahmoud Habbash, today condemned the intention of American Zionist groups to hold a ceremony at Mammilla cemetery in West Jerusalem, considering it a desecration of the Islamic graveyard and a flagrant violation of international law and conventions.They said in two separate statements that the historic cemetery includes the remains of Muslim leaders and residents of Jerusalem who have been buried there for more than a thousand years.
The ceremony is for the Museum of Tolerance.
Iranian media is already trying to turn this into major incitement.
I looked at this issue 11 years ago, and unearth this Palestine Post article from November 22, 1945::
An area of over 450 dunams in the heart of Jerusalem, now forming the Mamilla Cemetery, is to be converted into a business centre. The townplan is being completed under the supervision of the Supreme Moslem Council in conjunction with the Government Town Planning Adviser. A six-storeyed building to house the Supreme Moslem Council and other offices, a four-storeyed hotel, a bank and other buildings suitable for it, a college, a club and a factory are to be the main structures. There will also be a park to be called the Salah ed Din Park, after the Moslem warrior of Crusader times....In an interview with "Al-Wihda." the Jerusalem weekly, a member of the Supreme Moslem Council stated that the use of Moslem cemeteries in the public interest had many precedents both in Palestine and elsewhere....
The member added that the Supreme Moslem Council intended to publish a statement containing dispensations by Egyptian, Hejazi and Damascene clerics sanctioning the building programme.
Of course, the Museum of Tolerance was not built on top of a single grave. Court rulings consistently found that the graves had been moved years before.
There are few examples of Palestinian Arab hypocrisy more stark than how they themselves wanted to treat Mamilla Cemetery and their hysterical reactions to how Jews treat it in a far more respectful way.
One final piece of hypocrisy is how the Mufti himself acted when he built his own Palace hotel across the street from the cemetery.
