“The municipality is simply continuing the process of confiscating the entire cemetery,” said Zaki Agbaria, a civil engineer and head of the Aqsa Foundation for Islamic Waqf and Heritage. “We believe they want to change the area into a parking garage.”

The foundation is associated with the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, made up of Muslim citizens of Israel.

The feud is part of a much longer, centuries-old contest for control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land as well as part of an increasingly heated dispute over a small area in West Jerusalem known as the Mamilla or Ma’man Allah cemetery.

Last February, representatives of long-established Palestinian families petitioned the United Nations for help in trying to stop Israel and the Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles from constructing the new branch on an adjacent part of the cemetery. The project, to be known as the Center for Human Dignity  Museum of Tolerance, has been plagued by criticism since 2004, when it became clear that the 50-year-old parking lot on which it was to be built was sitting atop at least part of an old and distinguished Muslim cemetery.

The contours of the Mamilla cemetery are part of the dispute. Wiesenthal Center supporters say that there are no human remains left in the section where they plan to build, and that only part of it was ever a cemetery. They further contend that the effort to stop the project is the work of Muslim extremists seeking a foothold in West Jerusalem, and evidence of the need for such a center to spread more tolerance.