Palestinians Call Wheelchair-Access Elevator To Machpela Cave A “War Crime”

CHEVRON (VINnews) — Palestinian foreign minister Riad Al-Maliki recently described Israel’s planned building of an elevator to enable the disabled to access the Machpela cave (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Chevron as a “war crime and violation of all international laws.” Maliki deemed the court decision to allow such access as an attempt to “perpetuate the colonialism and occupation and to forge the heritage and history of the land.” He called on UNESCO to intervene and prevent Israel from its “destructive”plans at the cave, and also called on the international criminal court to investigate the “war crimes” committed by Israeli leaders.

The planned elevator will enable wheelchair access for Jews and Muslims alike, but Palestinian leaders see it as “igniting a religious war in the region”, since the IDF bypassed the local Palestinian-run municipality and issued an expropriation order to enable work on the project to commence. The municipality and the Palestinian Authority(PA) opposed the elevator, claiming it is a “Judaization” of the site.

Palestinian Authority Minister for the Civilian Affairs Hussein al-Shiekh tweeted in response to the expropriation order that “today the so-called Israeli Minister of Defense signed a decision to confiscate [and] annex parts of the Ibrahimi campus in Hebron, which is a violation of the Hebron protocol, an end of the agreement signed between the PLO and Israel and a continuation of the annexation project in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

Palestinian Media Watch, an NGO which monitors the Palestinian media and its references to Israel, reported that the PA’s Supreme Sharia Judge, Mahmoud Al-Habbash condemned the “occupation governments decision to allow the settlers to build an elevator inside the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron”, warning that Israel “will bear the consequences of this continued arrogant behavior and the aggression towards our holy sites will have a cost.”