Middle East Monitor / October 28, 2021
Israeli occupation forces installed surveillance cameras in the Al-Yusufiya cemetery in Jerusalem, which they restarted bulldozing last week, in order to establish multiple Talmudic parks and trails for Jewish settlers and tourists around the walls of the Old City, Arab48 reported.
Surveillance cameras were placed in several locations and entrances to the cemetery, but no official statement has been issued by the occupation forces regarding the move.
Occupation forces have been demolishing the cemetery, exposing human remains buried in a section where Arab soldiers killed during the 1967 war were buried.
The Palestinian Council of Endowments, Islamic Affairs and Holy Places in Jerusalem condemned the occupation’s actions, saying: “The cemetery is one of the most important and prominent Islamic cemeteries in the city of Jerusalem, which is filled with the remains of the people of the city, senior scholars, righteous people, Mujahideen and martyrs.”
Israel, it added, seeks to “obliterate the history of the holy city and its authentic Arab-Islamic character and change the historical status of the city.”
The council called on the occupation to “immediately stop these violations against the history of the holy city and its Islamic monuments, and to stop the tampering and vandalism that affects the sanctity of cemeteries and the dead.”
In December 2020, the municipality demolished a stairway and a fence at the cemetery.
In 2014, it prevented Jerusalemite citizens from burying their relatives in the cemetery’s northern area and removed 20 graves of Jordanian soldiers who were killed in 1967.
