After years of work and research, the French historian Vincent Lemire is launching a smartphone application that allows you to virtually visit the Maghreb district of Jerusalem, destroyed in 1967 by the Israeli army.
It’s an episode unknown in the long history of Jerusalem. The glorious version of the Six-Day War told by the victors is the crushed Arab armies, Israel tripling its territory and conquering the Old City of Jerusalem. But the historian Vincent Lemire, director of the French Research Center in Jerusalem, recalls an unknown episode of the last day of the war. “The destruction by Israel of the Maghreb district on the night of June 10 to 11, 1967 happened in a few hourshe explains, the population was evicted in two hours, at 5 p.m. By Sunday morning, everything was gone. We have a kind of gaping memory hole.” Years of work, research, documentation, direct testimonies were necessary to reconstruct in 3D this North African district built just in front of the Wailing Wall. A reconstruction to be found in a smartphone app, Jerusalem Maghrebi Quarter.
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For the Israelis, it was a question of widening the esplanade in front of the Wailing Wall to prevent the most devout Jews from going to pray on the esplanade of the Mosques located just above. But in one night, almost a thousand people lose everything. They are said to be North Africans because they are descendants of North Africans who came to Jerusalem from the 12th century to fight or stop over on the road to Mecca before finally settling there.
Ashraf Al Jandoubi Al Moghrabi comes from one of these families. For him, “all North Africans, whether Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians or Libyans, must understand that they are the owners of an inheritance, and of property in Jerusalem.”
“The Maghreb countries must do everything to preserve their heritage here. We are waiting for them to act. And I hope it will happen.”
Ashraf Al Jandoubi Al Moghrabiat franceinfo
The application allows you to discover a typical neighborhood of the old city of Jerusalem, low houses with flat roofs, a few cupolas but with lots of flowers and fruit trees. Vincent Lemire hopes that this application will reach a wider audience than specialists and do justice to its former inhabitants.
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“A 300-page book is very good, but the general public does not have access to itnotes the historian. 3D is perfect. What we also hope through this reconstruction is that it will allow memories to be reactivated. Today, we speak with former inhabitants of the Maghreb district, these are inhabitants who are somewhat in a post-traumatic situation.”
The Jerusalem Maghrebi Quarter application is available on GooglePlay and Apple Store.