The Bab al-Rahmah Cemetery: Israeli encroachment continues unabated

Abstract

In this brief report, the preeminent Palestinian expert on the archaeology of Jerusalem, Nazmi Jubeh, recapitulates the history of the city’s three major Muslim burial grounds, particularly the Bab al-Rahmah cemetery. After outlining the millennial history of the cemetery, Jubeh places the assaults on Bab al-Rahmah, and the desecration of other Muslim cemeteries, in the context of Israel’s efforts to Judaize Jerusalem—a policy that has been under way since the occupation of the eastern sector of the city during the June 1967 war. Jubeh reflects on decades of such Israeli efforts to eliminate or obfuscate the city’s non-Jewish cultural landscape and on the equally persistent attempts by Palestinians to resist the historical and cultural erasure of Jerusalem’s Arab and Muslim heritage.