Under the title “Under the Wall: The Moroccan Quarter in Jerusalem: Its Life and Death (1187-1967),” the Institute for Palestine Studies published the book by historian Vincent Lemaire, translated by Daoud Talhami. It is “the result of five years of research, reviving the memory of the Moroccan Quarter in Jerusalem that was erased,” according to the translation introduction.

The Institute for Palestine Studies said that this work highlights “the displacement of the residents of the Moroccan Quarter in Jerusalem, and its demolition to make way for the construction of a large plaza that extends today to the site of the Wailing Wall (al-Buraq Wall), in the wake of the Six-Day War in June 1967.”

“This event remained a secret for a long time. For the first time, Vincent Lemaire recounts this planned operation, the journey of the population’s displacement, and the history of this quarter founded by Saladin in 1187 to welcome Muslim pilgrims from the Maghreb,” she added. “It offers an unparalleled perspective to advance our understanding of Jerusalem, at a time when the Holy City has once again become the heart of the geopolitical tensions shaking the region.”

The foundation explained that the professor of history at the University of Barry-East/Gustave-Eiffel started his book from “scattered documents, starting with the archives of Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, reaching the archives of the Red Cross in Geneva, passing through the Ottoman archives in Istanbul, the testimonies of residents, and archaeological excavations that recently revealed household items and utensils that were buried during the demolition process.”

This book, with its nearly five hundred pages, presents a historical site for the Waqf, the legal basis on which it was based and according to which it was established for Moroccans passing through or residing in Jerusalem, then the history of the “Moroccan Quarter” in the Ottoman archives, religiously, financially and socially, reaching the stage of the British Mandate when Zionist projects and orientations began to emerge regarding the “Western Wall”, then the French protection of the quarter and its mention in the French archives after the Israeli occupation of part of Palestinian territory in 1948 and in the decade following that, before arriving at the history of the political decision to expel and destroy in 1967.

This author does not only write history, but also chronicles the present “after the disaster”, documenting the removal and its impact, the memory of the residents who remember the neighborhood before its demolition, what the Red Crescent and Red Cross archives, letters, and antiquities that were razed to the ground provide about it, and the diplomatic echo of the crime of demolishing the historic neighborhood and its legal endowments.

It is worth noting that Lemaire’s book was previously presented in Morocco in its French version before its new translation, presenting in Rabat, at the initiative of the Abderrahim Bouabid Foundation, a reconstruction of a Palestinian-Moroccan-Maghreb memory whose material continuity was demolished by Israeli bulldozers, describing the demolition of this endowment that had existed for eight centuries as a “crime and a state lie,” after the conscious destruction of its life resources from its endowments that were found outside it, for the Israelis to expand a religious holy place for them, which is the “Wailing Wall,” through a direct attack and displacement of its original inhabitants after leveling their property, the history and antiquities of the place, its schools, and its sanctities, to the ground.