debkafile Exclusive: Israeli Muslims sought Israeli court approval of claim to downtown (West) Jerusalem as an “Islamic sacred site”
They are backed by Hamas and Tehran.
The al Aqsa Society, on behalf of Sheik Raad Salah’s northern Israeli Muslim section, this month petitioned the High Court in Jerusalem to stop the construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance. It was denied.
The $200m project is going up in the heart of West Jerusalem’s park, cafe, shopping and tourist district. The court is asked to endorse a ruling by the Sharia Muslim court that designates Jerusalem’s central district from Agron Street and the municipal park up to Ben Hillel Street, a sacred Muslim precinct and ancient graveyard.
debkafile‘s sources report that the petition was instigated by Raad Salah with quiet support from the Palestinian Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran, as a step towards their proclaimed objective to “Islamize” Jerusalem, al Quds.
Sunday, Hamas politburo head Khaled Mashaal declared in Khartoum: Our mission is to liberate Jerusalem, purify the Aqsa Mosque. The Iranian state news agency declared: “Zionist authorities desecrate Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.”
The Israeli Muslim leader Raad Salah is notorious for having overseen the trashing of subterranean relics of Jewish temples when Israel allowed him to construct a vast new mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount as an extension to al Aqsa.
The old Mamillah (a corruption of Mamanu Allah) graveyard on which stands the Pallas Hotel on Agron Street and other key sites is mentioned in the petition.
debkafile‘s investigations reveal that, in 1922, when the British ruled the country under mandate, the pro-Nazi mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Hussaini, declared that the site of this cemetery was not sacred to Muslims. He therefore approved the construction of the hotel.
An important feature of the site is the ancient “Mamillah Pool”, which was Jerusalem’s main reservoir at the time of the Second Jewish Temple. It was fed from Solomon’s Pools between Bethlehem and Hebron and was linked by aqueduct to the Hezekiah pool still seen behind today’s Jaffa Gate in the Old City.
Most of the western city outside historic Jerusalem’s walls was built in the last century over Second Temple Jewish tombs.