Contesting symbolic landscape in Jerusalem
Subtitle: Jewish/Islamic conflict over the Museum of  Tolerance at Mamilla cemetery
By: Yitzhak Reiter
Publisher: Sussex Academic Press ; Jerusalem; Jerusalem Institute for Israel studies
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Brighton; Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
ISBN-13: 9781845196554; 9781845196615
Subjects: Trials, litigation; Building laws; Muslims; Legal status, laws; Islamic cemeteries; Law and legislation; Jewish museums; Arab-Israeli conflict; Law and  legislation; Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity (Jerusalem); Mamilla cemetery (Jerusalem)
Description: "In 2006 a dispute broke out regarding an initiative by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles (backed by Israeli authorities) to construct a Museum of Tolerance (MoT) in West Jerusalem. The museum was to be built on a plot of land that in the past had been part of the historic Muslim Mamilla Cemetery, which since the 1980s has served as a municipal parking lot. Debate centred on whether construction of a museum dedicated to human dignity on Muslim cemeterial land was justified. The Northern Islamic Movement and a group of 70 academics and eight Israeli civil society organizations (including rabbis) opposed the project, but their petition to Israel's High Court of Justice failed. Yitzhak Reiter presents the public and legal dilemmas at the individual level (an act of insensitivity to the Muslim minority in Jerusalem); at the political level (the right of equal treatment by the state and the right to administer holy properties [waqf] according to religious law and rulings of shari'a [Islamic law] courts); and at the universal level (can conflict over a holy place be addressed objectively from the ideological/political positions that the place symbolizes, and is a secular civil court competent/appropriate to adjudicate a religious conflict)"--Supplied by publisher.
Notes: Case discussed: Al-Aqsa Corporation for the Development of Properties of the Muslim Endowment Ltd., et al. v. Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum Corporation, et al., 19 Oct. 2008, case nos. HCJ 52/06, HCJ 1331/06, and HCJ 1671/06, clause 1

Includes bibliographical references (pages 178-182) and index.
Table of contents: title: The Mamilla cemetery and the chronology of the dispute; title: The struggle over the symbolic landscape : zionization versus Palestinization and Islamization; title: The waqf in the national-religious struggle of the Arab-Muslim minority in Israel; title: The struggle over the jurisdiction of the sharia court; title: The sanctity of cemeteries in Islam : science, belief, and interpretation; title: The Palace Hotel and other precedents of construction over Muslim cemeteries; title: "what is abhorrent to you, do not do to your friend" : comparative legal perspective; title: "hidden from sight" : the High Court verdict; title: The role of judicial tribunals in resolving conflicts over holy places; title: Conclusion; title: Epilogue.