Police: No vandalism, rock attacks at Mt. of Olives cemetery in months

The Israel Police on Monday said there had been no vandalism and “no rock attacks” on civilians at the Mount of Olives cemetery, which overlooks Jerusalem’s Old City, in two to three months.

Addressing the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environmental Committee, police representative Chaim Shmueli reported a “drastic decline” in attacks at the site, with the exception of “sporadic” stone attacks on Israeli policemen and on the A-Tur thoroughfare leading to the cemetery.

A program to bolster security at the historic cemetery, much targeted by hate-criminals in recent years, is being gradually introduced.

“There are none, there are none, there are none,” Shmueli said emphatically, referring to attacks in the last two-three months. “There are no stone-throwings [on civilians visiting the sites]. There is no vandalism,” he said, adding that he was saying this “responsibly.”

“All the past cases are from half a year ago or longer,” he said. The police representative also dismissed the notion that attacks were going unreported, insisting: “Everything is documented.”

However, he conceded that cars on roads leading to the Mount of Olives, namely in A-Tur, were occasionally pelted with rocks.

“There are sporadic incidents that mostly affect the security forces,” Shmueli said, emphasizing that this was in the flash-point A-Tur East Jerusalem neighborhood as a whole, in which the Mount of Olives rests. But there has been a “drastic decline,” he said, which he attributed to the heavy police deployment in the area. This included convoys escorting visitors to the cemetery, often dozens of times a day, he said.

The committee meeting, the third of its kind, was overseeing the implementation of a months-long program to secure the cemetery. The program provides for installing cameras, increasing police troops, and building a fence through part of the area. In the past several years, gravestones in the cemetery, which holds some 150,000 graves, have been smashed and set on fire in a series of hate crimes.

The police assessment came during a more than three-month terror wave, in which Israel has seen near-daily stabbings, car-rammings, stone-throwing, and firebombing attacks by Palestinian assailants, killing over 25 Israelis. Last year, the Mount of Olives cemetery was a flashpoint for violence, with frequent vandalism of graves and near-weekly attacks on Jewish visitors by Palestinian youths as late as September 2015.

During an August tour of the cemetery by the lawmakers in the committee, the deputy commander of the Jerusalem district said police were planning to set up 160 security cameras in the cemetery over the next four years and bolster security in the Afghan section of the cemetery — the section most frequently vandalized — as well as throughout the East Jerusalem site. He too maintained the number of attacks on the Mount of Olives “has significantly decreased” and said the police held a daily security briefing on the subject.

The upbeat assessment by police was backed up on Monday, to some degree, by Harvey Schwartz, who heads the Israel branch of the International Committee of the Preservation of Har Hazeitim (ICPHH).

“It’s much better now,” he said, thanking police. “But not 100 percent.”

Wrapping up the session, committee chairman David Amsalem (Likud) urged police to begin security preparations for the Passover holiday in late April, when larger numbers of visitors from Israel and abroad head to the cemetery. The whole security issue, said Amsalem, made him feel “ashamed.”

“We’re sitting 200 meters [sic] from the Western Wall, as the crow flies, and people have to think twice about whether to go visit their parents’ graves?” he said. “If this was France, believe me, they would bring in 2,000 police units.”

Amsalem also said he would consult with Jerusalem Minister Ze’ev Elkin on the possibility of declaring the ancient Jewish cemetery a heritage site — a move that would likely be disputed due to its location in East Jerusalem.