MIDDLE EAST: The construction of a Jewish Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem is causing unease among Palestinian religious groups because it is being built on top of part of an ancient Muslim cemetery.
Islamic groups will next week seek an urgent court injunction to stop excavation work for a €167 million complex located above what was the city's main Muslim cemetery before the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948.
Local media reports say workers at the city centre site have already uncovered at least 150 skeletons, despite opposition from Jerusalem's Waqf, the Islamic religious authority that oversees Muslim holy sites.
One worker told Haaretz newspaper that he had mistakenly crushed a skeleton's skull.
"We are not against peace or tolerance or this museum, but . . . this place been a cemetery for 1,400 years. The relatives of those buried there can't accept such an idea built on the bodies of their relatives," said Adnan Husseini, the general director of the Waqf.
"We explained to the [ Jerusalem] municipality . . . that cemeteries are very holy and I think the Jews know more than any other religion how important tombs are.
"They take very good care of their tombs in east Jerusalem, so why do they deny these rights to other religions?"
The museum is part of a three-acre campus planned by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, an international Jewish organisation named after the late Austrian Nazi hunter and dedicated mostly to combating anti-Semitism.
It is designed by the renowned Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry who also designed the curvaceous metal-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
The project is located in the western half of Jerusalem which was captured by Zionist forces in the 1948 War of Independence when most of its non-Jewish population fled.
Israel subsequently transferred the land above the graveyard to the Jewish-controlled Jerusalem municipality which created Independence Park on the site, and recently turned over part of it to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for the proposed museum.
Archaeologists believe the graveyard dates back to the seventh-century Byzantine era and was later used by Jerusalem's Muslims as well as Christian crusaders.
An Islamic religious court banned construction near the graves last weekend, but it is unclear if this ruling has any legal status.
Israel's High Court will next Wednesday hear a petition by Islamic groups to halt the building work, which they say is a desecration of the cemetery. In a recent preliminary hearing, the High Court declined to order a halt to construction until the matter is decided.
A spokesman for a public relations agency representing the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem yesterday said the Muslim cemetery was a few metres from the museum site, which is being excavated by the municipality's Moriah company.
Asked if such a sensitive and contested site was an appropriate one for a museum promoting tolerance, Mr Hagai Elias said that was a matter for the court.
In the past, ultra-Orthodox Jews have clashed with city officials over the desecration of ancient Jewish graves near construction sites.