JERUSALEM, Monday, October 25, 2021
(WAFA) – The Israeli occupation authorities today resumed the digging of a
historic Muslim cemetery in the occupied city of Jerusalem, according to an
official.
Mustafa Abu Zahra, Head of the
Committee for the Preservation of Islamic Cemeteries in Jerusalem, said that
the Israeli municipal crews and officers of the so-called Nature Protection
Authority continued to level parts of the cemetery, which lies adjacent to the
walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Over the last two weeks, the Israeli
occupation authorities demolished part of the cemetery over the weekend,
exposing human remains buried in a section where Jordanian soldiers killed
during the 1967 war were laid to rest.
The Israeli occupation municipality
of the occupied Holy City plans to bulldoze Al-Yusufiyah
Cemetery to build a "Bible Trail", a string of national parks in the
south of the Old City of Jerusalem.
In December 2020, the Israeli
occupation authorities demolished the wall of the cemetery adjacent to the al-Asbat Gate and removed its archaeological stairs in
addition to the stairs leading to the martyrs' cemetery.
In 2014, the occupation authorities
prevented burial in the cemetery’s northern area and removed twenty graves of
Jordanian soldiers who were martyred in 1967 in what is known as the Cemetery
of the Martyrs and the Monument of the Unknown Soldier.
K.F.
