The story of the Maqams
Takeover of Palestinian sacred and heritage sites in the West Bank
Prayer sites, Maqam sites (burial sites or memorials of sheikhs/Muslim holy men), functioned as organizing focal points – religious, cultural and social – in Palestine’s rural areas. Palestinians used to hold pilgrimages to the Maqam and the sacred trees surrounding them on holidays and religious occasions (mawassem) for prayer, religious ceremonies and rituals, circumcision celebrations and weddings, public and private occasions, and simple family recreation outdoors.
The list of holy men who had tombs and Maqam sites named after them is long. Maqam names are taken from the Qur’an, the Bible, the New Testament and from local model personages, and all Maqam sites are sanctified by Muslems without distinction.
Ever since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the Civil Administration has recognized two types of prayer sites:
Prayer sites named after Biblical personages, recognized by the staff officer for religious affairs: these have been renovated and are at present destinations of Jewish massive pilgrimages;
Prayer sites, Maqams, sanctified by Muslims alone. Such Maqam sites have not been recognized by the Israeli authorities in charge of prayer sites to prevent their desecration and preserve their accessibility. They are caged inside Israeli settler-colonies, nature reserves and army firing zones, and their present condition is an obvious hazard to their future existence.
Such discrimination does not abide by either Israeli or international law, that commit the occupier to maintain freedom of worship and ritual sites of the occupied population.
Four ancient Maqams visited in this video exemplify the strategies in which Israel erases one by one Palestinian sites of heritage and public ritual:
1. The practice of enclosing them in Closed Military Zones – namely Israeli settler-colonies and army maneuver zones, all out of bounds for Palestinians.
2. Enclosing them in nature reserves, failing to mark the Maqam sites by name on road signs or any other local indication and appropriating them by plaques and monuments for army officers/settlers/Jewish conotations.
3. Non-recognition by the Israeli staff officer of Muslim shrines as sanctified sites to be preserved,
Maqam Nebi Daniel
The Maqam of the Prophet Daniel was built by Muslims on land belonging to the people of the village of Al-Khader near Bethlehem. Residents of the villages around the Maqam would go up to it for prayers and parties.
One day it disappeared, and in its place the settlers of Neve Daniel and the Sde Boaz outpost set up picnic tables.
Palestinian farmers who own cultivated plots and olive groves around the destroyed site are forced to reach it on foot from their village, after the road that bypasses Neve Daniel was also blocked to them.