Battle erupts over grounds of tolerance center

JERUSALEM

The Museum of Tolerance started off with good intentions, more than $100 million in donations, an eye-catching de- sign by architect Frank Gehry, a 2004 kickoff ceremony attended by Arnold Schwarzenegger and a great piece of Jerusalem real estate.

But underneath that real estate, it turned out, there were Muslim graves. As a result, instead of bringing together this contentious city’s warring tribes, the museum has provoked a fight with political, religious and historical dimensions between Muslims and Jews — all this before it has been built.

Months of arbitration have ended in deadlock, the site is enclosed in aluminum walls, and the dispute is now before Israel’s Supreme Court. Even if the court gives the go-ahead, however, the Museum of Tolerance could well remain permanently tainted by accusations of intolerance.

The museum was conceived by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a nonprofit Jewish human-rights group based in Los Angeles. It was to promote coexistence in a city holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians, and claimed by Israelis and Palestinians as a capital.

The center’s plan includes a conference center, a theater and museums for adults and children, with exhibits covering Jewish history and Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors.

The Jerusalem municipality gave the Wiesenthal Center a municipal parking lot in central Jerusalem on which to build the museum.

But in Jerusalem, a parking lot is rarely just a parking lot. Before it was turned into a four-story underground garage in the 1970s, the land had been a small part of a sprawling Muslim cemetery.

The cemetery fell out of use after the creation of Israel in 1948, but many of its graves are still visible, crumbling among trees in what has become the heart of the Jewish side of the city. Part of the cemetery is now known as Independence Park. Another part was sold much earlier, in the 1930s, at the initiative of Jerusalem’s top Muslim cleric, and became the renowned Palace Hotel.

The project’s backers say they didn’t know the lot contained graves when they acquired it, and cite the Palace Hotel precedent and a 1964 ruling by a top Muslim cleric permitting construction on the land. But this has not mollified critics, who charge that nothing justifies the desecration of graves.

When surveyors found human remains at the site this year, two Israeli Arab groups obtained a court order freezing construction.

One of the groups fighting construction of a museum in the cemetery is the Al-Aqsa Co., affiliated with Israel’s Islamic Movement, a rising political force among the country’s 1.2 million Arab citizens.

“Islamic law is very clear: You can’t build on land that was once a cemetery,” said Muhammad Suleiman, an attorney for the group. The cleric who issued the 1964 ruling was corrupt, Mr. Suleiman charged, and the fact that Arabs were silent about the parking lot’s presence for decades doesn’t mean they should remain silent now.

The Wiesenthal Center’s compromise proposal — to move the graves, erect a memorial and fund the rehabilitation of the remaining gravestones nearby — is not sufficient, Mr. Suleiman said, insisting that the museum be built elsewhere.

The Wiesenthal Center refuses, saying it already has spent millions of dollars. Rabbi Marvin Hier, who heads the center and had the idea of building a museum, said the delays alone have cost more than $1 million.

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