Sobbing and trying to cling to her son's gravestone, Palestinian Jerusalemite Ola Nababteh was dragged away from Al-Yusufiyah cemetery by Israeli police as a digger truck leveled land for a new park behind her.
Palestinians say the project encroaches on a centuries-old Muslim graveyard beneath the eastern wall of Jerusalem's Old City. Israel captured East Jerusalem including the Old City in a 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognized internationally.
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A Muslim cemetery disturbed during the construction of a new park near the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem
(Photo: Silwanic)
The Israeli municipality says authorized burial sites in the cemetery will not be harmed. But the unearthing of human bones when construction for the park began this month stirred panic among families like Nababteh's with loved ones interred at Al-Yusufiyah.
"Over my dead body - my son will not be removed from here," Nababteh said on Tuesday, a day after Israeli police removed her from the graveyard.
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The Muslim cemetery near the location of a planned park in East Jerusalem
(Photo: Silwanic)
Arieh King, a Jerusalem deputy mayor, said there was never any intent to move the grave and that police had evacuated Nababteh because she was too close to construction.
The remains found this month were not in an authorized gravesite and "had been buried illicitly in the ground many years ago," he said, adding that the park would provide Palestinians with easier access to the Old City.
3 View gallery
A Muslim cemetery disturbed during the construction of a new park near the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem
(Photo: Silwanic)
Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, said the park, due to open in mid-2022, is an assault on the cemetery.
"The graves of human beings cannot be violated no matter the gender, nationality or religion," he said.