The Destruction of Jerusalem’s Moroccan Quarter: From Centuries-Old Maghrebi Community to Western Wall Prayer Plaza

The Maghreb (meaning “the place where the sun sets” in Arabic) is a region of northwest Africa that lies along the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. It has existed in different forms since the eighth century. Today it comprises five countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and sometimes Mauritania. In Arabic, the name for Morocco is also Maghreb.1

Pilgrims from this region first arrived in Jerusalem in the late 10th century.2

In 1187, the Kurdish warrior Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi conquered Jerusalem and ousted the Crusaders. To reward the many Maghrebi and southern Spanish soldiers who fought in his army, Salah al-Din offered them parcels of land around the Western Wall.3

Several years later, in 1193, his son Afdal, who was governor of Damascus (which included Jerusalem at the time), endowed the quarter as a waqf to the Maghrebi community. The designated purpose of this waqf was to provide accommodation for arriving Maghrebis “without distinction of origin,” including pilgrims and those fleeing oppression at home.4 The generous endowment read, “For the benefit of the community of Mughrabi of all description and different occupations, male and female, old and young, the low and the high, to settle in its residences and to benefit from its uses according to their different needs.”5 Documentation from the time establishes that “Maghrebi” was defined as immigrants from western Tunisia, Algiers, and Morocco.6 In practice, this meant that any Maghrebi person who wished to reside in the quarter would be welcomed.7

By 1300, the Moroccan Quarter was home to a thriving population of multiconfessional Maghrebis, both Jewish and Muslim. And over the course of the next three centuries, several more awqaf (plural of waqf) were established in the quarter by Muslim leaders under the Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman dynasties. These endowments included a madrasa specialized in Islamic law, a mosque, and a zawiya, or waqf charitable foundation or retreat or hostel.8 In fact, “a significant part of the awqaf in Jerusalem was dedicated to the Maghrebi community” and helped fund their existence in the city.9

The quarter had become a flourishing intellectual hub and drew scholars and jurists in addition to pilgrims, merchants, and others. It experienced significant growth in the 16th century.10 Awqaf documents shed light on the Maghrebi families who lived in the quarter, including, among others, al-Jaza’iri, al-Telemsani, al-Zawawi, al-Marrakechi, al-Ribati, al-Maknesi, al-Sousi, al-Tunisi, al-Shawi, al-Bakri, al-Dawadi, al-Jilani, al-Okbi, al-Adhari, al-Obeidi, al-Haifawi. This vibrant and diverse community played an integral role in the city’s history and economic, social, spiritual, and cultural life for centuries.11 For example, 20 different judges were Maghrebis.12

In the 16th century, the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I (also referred to as Suleiman the Magnificent) opened a narrow space between the quarter’s perimeter and the Western Wall in order for Jews to be able to pray there.13 This space, a narrow corridor about 120 square meters in size,14 accommodated roughly 12,000 worshippers per day during the British Mandate period.15

Due to its proximity to the Western (Wailing) Wall, which was holy to Jews, the fate of the Moroccan Quarter became inextricably tied up with the fate of the wall, specifically the struggle for control over the right to pray there. Since 1852, all aspects of the ownership, administration, and maintenance of the holy places in Jerusalem, as well as the rights and rituals for religious observations therein, had been governed by a set of arrangements called the Status Quo which was decreed by Sultan Abdulmejid I at the time, and subsequently upheld by the Treaty of Paris, signed by the great powers in 1855. The Status Quo thus represented “legal obligations that guaranteed all faiths access to their holy sites and the right to consent to any change, either in procedure or substance.”16 These arrangements derived from centuries of nuanced experience and power struggles over the holy places, largely between different Christian denominations, but were officially expanded to include the Western Wall and Rachel’s Tomb under the mandate.17 A full account of the Status Quo as it was written up in 1929 can be viewed here.

In the first decades of the 20th century, as the Zionist movement took root, tensions began rising over the rights of Jews and Muslims to the wall and the narrow corridor in front of it. Even before that, as early as 1887, Baron de Rothchild proposed to buy the entire quarter and demolish it to replace it with a plaza.18 In May 1918, just months after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, Chaim Weizmann wrote to Balfour describing the quarter as “miserable cottages and derelict buildings” and proposed “the handing over of the Wailing Wall” for which Jews would generously pay.19 In 1919, the Zionists offered 80,000 pounds for the wall, to no avail.20 Subsequent offers followed, but all were rebuffed by the mufti at that time, Kamal al-Husseini.

Throughout the 1920s, as the Zionist movement grew, emboldened by the establishment of new bodies locally and abroad, the splitting off and mobilization of the Revisionists led by Jabotinsky in 1922, and the establishment of a “dirty tricks fund” to sow discord among Muslims and Christians and to develop the Haganah, confrontations over the wall erupted routinely over all manner of details whose apparent banality belied their deeper significance.21 One American author and journalist, Vincent Sheean, who was in Jerusalem on assignment at that time, captured the larger significance of these struggles thus:

In August 1929, these tensions boiled over when around 2,000 Jabotinsky Betar youth23 troops marched to the wall and massed for a (redolent of the annual “Jerusalem Day” march of the present day) flag-waving nationalistic demonstration on the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av, a date with highly charged religious and historic significance for that particular moment.24 They were there for nationalistic, not religious purposes, raising the national flag and singing the anthem HaTikvah, which at that time was outlawed.25 As Sheean noted in his diary,

Indeed, the provocative march triggered a counter response the very next day, August 16, which happened to be the Prophet’s Birthday (mawlid), a Muslim holiday. A large crowd of about 1,500 Arab Muslims marched from the Haram al-Sharif through the Moroccan Quarter to the Western Wall and inflicted damage on it.27 In short order, this all spiraled into prolonged and deadly riots throughout the country known as the 1929 Palestine riots, or in Arabic the al-Buraq uprising. These riots, which lasted about a week, led to the deaths of 133 Jews and 116 Arabs28 in Jerusalem, Hebron, and elsewhere in the country.

The upshot of these riots was that the British Government appointed a four-person Commission of Inquiry called the Shaw Commission to investigate the causes of the violence. The Shaw Commission, which had no remit to investigate rights and claims to the wall, released its report on March 31, 1930, and thus also called for an International Commission of Inquiry for the Wailing Wall, which was approved on May 15, 1930. The commission was approved by the League of Nations on condition that its members were not British.29

This second commission, called the Löfgren Commission, was intended “to establish the rights and claims of Muslims and Jews in connection with the Western or Wailing Wall” and to identify and prevent the causes of the violence in the future.

Its endowment as waqf property made this status inalienable in Islamic law. The commission also ruled that Jews should have the right to pray at the wall at all times undisturbed. However, “it was not permissible to place any article on the pavement ‘that could be considered as indications of ownership.’”33

The findings were integrated into a law in 1931 and subsequently incorporated into the official Status Quo on the holy places by the mandate government as the King’s Order in Council on Palestine (Western or Wailing Wall) 1931.34 Legally speaking, this Status Quo remained in effect at the time of the occupation35 and onward until 1984, when Israel passed the Law of Repeal Obsolete Laws, which repealed the King’s Order in Council on the Western Wall.36

The Moroccan Quarter remained an Islamic waqf and the site of uninterrupted Maghrebi settlement in Jerusalem from its creation in 1193 until June 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, Gaza, the Syrian Golan Heights, and Sinai. At that time, the neighborhood had residents who were of Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, and Palestinian origin, although the majority were of Moroccan origin.37

Sized at 10,000 square meters (40 dunums, or two and a half acres38), the Moroccan Quarter was the fifth largest of the 14 quarters in the Old City.39

Abdallah Schleifer, a Middle East correspondent reporting from Jerusalem in 1967, described the quarter thus:

Even before the Israeli army reached Jerusalem, doubtless deeply aware of the history recounted above, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan ordered the opening of a route to the Western Wall (on the assumption that it would fall to Israeli hands). In his view, history had provided a chance to accomplish what Jews in the country had been agitating for for decades: opening wider access to the wall.

The war commenced on June 5; by the morning of June 7, the Old City was captured. According to Israeli journalist Uzi Benziman, even on that very day, a proposal to demolish the Moroccan Quarter was conveyed to the designated military governor of Jerusalem, Colonel Shlomo Lahat, who agreed with it. As one centrally involved participant, Meron Benvenisti, later explained:

Benvenisti was serving as an assistant to Teddy Kollek and a few weeks later, Kollek appointed him as administrator of the newly occupied “eastern sector” of the city.42

Lahat himself subsequently acknowledged, in an article in the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha Ir, that

But the destruction of the quarter violated the Status Quo (the law of the land)44 as well as international law. Article 53 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) states:

On June 8, former prime minister David Ben-Gurion arrived at the site with Kollek, the mayor of Jewish Jerusalem, and Jacob Yanai, director of the national gardens authority. Kollek explained the latter’s involvement: “The responsibility for executing the plan will be in the hands of the national gardens authority in order to give the matter as far as possible an official mark”45—meaning that the government would be able to distance itself from carrying out a blatantly illegal operation. According to Uzi Benziman:

On June 10, Kollek went to the wall with a small group of historians, architects, and archeologists, and the deputy military governor of Jerusalem. Clearly, their collective expertise would have allowed them to be mindful of the significance of the Moroccan Quarter and its legal status. They decided to demolish the whole quarter and, while standing there, signed a “scrap of paper”47 with the areas for demolition marked out with two big Xs. They explicitly noted “al-Buraq Mosque” and “the Tomb of the Shaikh” for demolition, showing that they were fully aware of the existence of these two holy sites.48

According to Kollek, then mayor of West Jerusalem, the “practical” consideration behind the decision to raze the quarter was to create a space big enough to accommodate the large number of Jewish worshippers expected to visit the site.49 There was a Jewish holiday, Shavuot, coming up in a few days (June 14), and Kollek and the other officials who made the decision wanted to ensure that the thousands of Jews expected to come worship at the wall at that historic moment had ample space.

But their decision went far beyond that: there was a sense that this was a fleeting moment in which to accomplish, under the turmoil and chaos of war, an objective that had been on the Zionist agenda for decades. This was the only moment to move ahead with such a blatantly illegal act of wanton destruction and dispossession without questions. As Kollek himself wrote in his autobiography:

And according to Benziman:

So on June 10, 1967, just three days after Israel occupied the city, Kollek hastily summoned a group of about 15 private contractors to come to the Western Wall.52 The mayor called on the contractors “to distance any involvement of official bodies in the demolition as much as possible.”53 According to one source, he ordered them to work around the clock without stopping until the job was finished—even if ordered by the prime minister or the defense minister. “Tell the workers that they should stop the work only on the direct order of Teddy Kollek and I will make sure that I am unavailable until the job is finished!”54 Residents were given only three hours to empty their belongings.55

The demolition team arrived at 6 p.m., only four hours after the ceasefire had been signed. They began their work with bulldozers at 11 p.m., under cover of darkness by design. The choice of contractors was also intentional:

The contractors, for their part, were so intoxicated with their assignment that at 3 a.m. that same night, they founded the “Order of the Kotel,” because they felt they were “carrying out a great mission for the Jewish people.” Later they wrote about themselves that they were “a sort of imitation of an order of knights for those who ‘purified the Kotel plaza for the people of Israel.’”57 One of the contractors shared: “I was sky-high; it was a pleasure.”58 They had reunions for decades after.

On June 10, 1967, when Israeli authorities demolished the 10,000 square meter quarter to create the plaza, roughly 650 residents (108 families59) who lived in 135 homes in the quarter were made homeless.60

An army officer moved from house to house, ordering the residents to leave and gather at Zion Gate. When residents resisted, “a unit of reserve soldiers removed the residents by force.”61 For those remaining houses where residents still refused to leave, the bulldozer drivers were ordered to start leveling the houses even with families still in them.62 As one resident recalled:

By morning, it developed that the bulldozer crew in its zeal had demolished homes that were not slated for demolition in the hastily drawn plan. At that point, according to Benvenisti, “It was then decided to demolish the entire Mugrabi Quarter.”64 The destruction continued for two nights under floodlights. By dawn on June 12, eight centuries of Jerusalem history, including two mosques, had been reduced to rubble. Residents were repeatedly blocked from returning to attempt to retrieve anything from the rubble.

A former resident shared that when some of the affected Maghrebis pleaded with Kollek to intervene, he effectively shrugged his shoulders and said, “The order came from the military; it’s out of my hands.”65

The mayor of Arab Jerusalem at that time, Ruhi al-Khatib, later testified to the United Nations Security Council what he witnessed:

At least one elderly woman was acknowledged by the authorities to have been killed in her home, although residents say she was not the only one.67 Her name was al-Hajja Rasmiyya ‘Ali Taba‘ki.

The state’s intent did not stop at cleansing merely the immediate area. Ahmad al-Jaridi, a resident among those who were dispossessed and exiled, recounts in an oral history: “The Israelis had buses waiting at Damascus Gate for those who wanted to go to the bridge that leads to Amman [Jordan]. They gave chocolate to people who got on the bus.”68

It is estimated that at the time of its destruction, half of the residents of the Moroccan Quarter were of Moroccan origin. About half chose to return to Morocco (via Amman) with the help of King Hassan II of Morocco, while the remainder relocated to Shu‘fat refugee camp, al-Ram, Abu Dis, and elsewhere in Jerusalem or the occupied West Bank.69 Many of these exiled Jerusalemites and their descendants continue to live within short distances of their former homes. Their stories are alive and part of the fabric of Jerusalem.70

After it was over, Kollek justified the demolition thus: “It was the greatest thing we could do and it is good we did it immediately.”71

The official Israeli narrative that was quickly circulated announced was that what had been destroyed was of no significance, and its residents preferred and indeed volunteered to leave. Typifying this campaign is the following passage from a book on the Western Wall published by the Ministry of Defense:

After the operation was completed, the section of the wall allocated for praying was expanded from 28 to 60 meters, and the small 120 square meter corridor in front of the wall became the Western Wall Plaza, enlarged to a massive 20,000 square meters where the Moroccan Quarter had previously stood.73

On April 18, 1968, the state expropriated 116 dunums of Arab property by the wall, including the Moroccan Quarter, Haret al-Sharaf, and Bab al-Salsila Street.74 With that, the Moroccan Quarter and its centuries of history were fully and finally erased.

Today, this plaza retains no traces of its origins, and its history and story are not widely known, even among Palestinians. As Simone Ricca has noted, “this erasure was not only physical, but one of memory as well.”75 The site is not acknowledged as one with historic value in official publications, museums, or classrooms. The integral role the quarter and its Muslim residents played in the city’s evolution for centuries is forgotten. The place is now the site of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of Jewish worshippers per day, effectively an outdoor synagogue, as well as the venue for swearing-in ceremonies for Israeli soldiers and bar mitzvahs.

Looking back, it is clear that the destruction of the Moroccan Quarter was the opening act of the Judaization of East Jerusalem, a process that flowed predictably from the Judaization of West Jerusalem before it and has continued inexorably ever since.

The late Meron Benvenisti, who went on to become the deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1971 to 1978, was delegated by then mayor Teddy Kollek to supervise the destruction of the Moroccan Quarter in June 1967. Soon thereafter, Kollek appointed him as administrator of the “eastern sector.” 

In the Israel documentary short Mugrabi Quarter (2013, 7.5 min) below, directed by Anat Ronco, Benvenisti was filmed returning for a very awkward encounter with one of the few surviving residents of the quarter who still lives there, al-Hajj Muhammad ‘Abd al-Jalil ‘Abed al-Maludi.

Following the encounter, when pressed by the filmmaker, Benvenisti acknowledges this act of destruction as an “original sin.”

Kate Rouhana and Nadim Bawalsa of the Jerusalem Story Team collaborated on the research, writing, and editing for this Backgrounder.