Nearly every night since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, Israeli settlers have stormed the historical landmark known as Ribat al-Kurd in the Old City of Jerusalem, kicking Palestinian residents’ doors and urinating on their steps.

Neighborhood complaints to Israeli police are met with a shrug, telling the community of 14 families that authorities can’t do anything without evidence from surveillance. With an increase in harassment, residents have erected a steel door at the neighborhood’s entrance to deter settlers.

The escalated attacks come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized renovations for the Islamic waqf on May 5, 2025.1 Since then, construction crews from the Jerusalem Municipality, Israel’s Ministry of Heritage, and the Israel Antiquities Authority have been drilling, hammering, and excavating the site directly adjacent to al-Aqsa Mosque.2

According to resident Kayed Abu Smineh, construction begins at 7:30 a.m. every day. While he can escape the mind-numbing noise by going to work, his family is besieged by the construction, unable to enter and exit as they please when Israeli crew workers arrive. The construction site abuts the walls of his home, which has already suffered some damage from the ongoing work, Abu Smineh explained, noting a crack in his tiled living room floor, which he says is a result of the “constant drilling.”3

Located next to Bab al-Hadid (Iron Gate) in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, Ribat al-Kurd is named after a Mamluk-era prince, al-Muqar al-Sayfi Kurd, who built it in 1294. Ribat means “hospice” in Arabic, so Ribat al-Kurd was dedicated to providing hospitality to pilgrims and visitors visiting Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque. In 1817, the Palestinian al-Shihabi family began residing there and thus, it became known as “Hosh Shihabi.”4 In 1983, the Islamic Waqf Department became the guardians of the endowment.5

“It belongs to the al-Shihabi family . . . [so] it’s family-owned, but the waqf will take care of it,” Dr. Mustafa Abu Sway, a member of the Islamic Waqf Council in Jerusalem, told Jerusalem Story.6 “They do have paper ownership. This is not like public land or [Israeli] state-owned land.”

Israel refers to Ribat al-Kurd as the “Small Wailing Wall,” considering it an extension of the Jewish holy site of the Western Wall (al-Buraq Wall in Arabic). As Daniel Seidemann, founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli nonprofit that monitors geopolitical developments on the ground in Jerusalem, explained, the Western Wall was a small alleyway before Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. Days after seizing East Jerusalem, Israel immediately demolished the adjacent ancient Moroccan Quarter and bulldozed the sliver of the wall into the large open prayer plaza seen today.

“The wall is the containment wall of the al-Aqsa esplanade, but it is also, at its lower levels, the remnant of the containment wall of the [Jewish] Temple. As a result of, until 1967, being the sole remnant of the Western Wall, it became a site of devotion for Jews,” Seidemann said.7 “The containment wall doesn’t end there. It goes the entire length of the esplanade of al-Aqsa to Via Dolorosa” (a processional route in the Old City).

According to conservation architect and researcher Simone Ricca, Jewish groups claim to have discovered the “Small Wailing Wall” in 1971 and began praying at the site at that time.8 Nadav Shragai, author of The Secret of the Disappearing Wall, which investigated the origins of the Small Wailing Wall, revealed that some Jews consider it more sacred than its plaza counterpart, because it sits closer to the inner sanctuary, which is known as the “Holy of Holies,” of the Jewish Temple. The Jewish Temple was destroyed first by the Babylonians and then the Romans in the sixth BCE and seventh CE centuries, respectively.9 Today, this area is referred to as the Temple Mount by Jews, while Muslims know it as al-Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam, which includes al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. While some Jews may pray at the Small Wailing Wall, it’s not considered an official holy site.

“It has never been the focus of devotion or sanctity,” Seidemann said. “But now this is being used to create an instant holy site, which never existed in the past, in the middle of a Palestinian courtyard. What could possibly go wrong?”

Israeli authorities have performed excavations throughout the Muslim Quarter to uncover more of the Western Wall since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. Work to uncover an underground tunnel began in 1967, causing damage to Ribat al-Kurd.10

“The [Israeli] occupation authorities sought to exploit legal loopholes or internal family disputes over ownership to justify entering the site and carrying out what appeared to be ‘renovation works,’ which in reality served settlement objectives,” Marouf al-Rifai, media advisor to the Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate, told Jerusalem Story.11

In January 2011, the Jerusalem Development Authority, an Israeli intergovernmental agency leading economic development projects in Jerusalem, removed scaffolding over Ribat al-Kurd and added a sign at its entry reading, “Small Western Wall,” officially announcing its opening as a prayer space for Jews. This came after years-long pressure from the settler group Ateret Cohanim to open the site for Jewish worship.12 In October of the same year, the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, a Zionist nonprofit, advocated to Netanyahu and then Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat to renovate the site.13

Netanyahu’s recent approval of construction at Ribat al-Kurd isn’t the first time he’s ignored security warnings to propel the Israeli settlers’ agenda.

Three months into his first term and against advice from Israeli intelligence officials, Netanyahu gave the green light in September 1996 to unveil the Western Wall Tunnel, a 1,000-foot-long underground passageway at the base of the Western Wall and bordering al-Aqsa Mosque. Escorted by the Israeli army, a team of Israeli workers led by archaeologist Dan Bahat hammered into a rock wall along Via Dolorosa to reveal the tunnel.14 The incident sparked four days of clashes known as the “Western Wall Riots,” primarily between the Israeli army and the newly created Palestinian National Security Forces, the Palestinian Authority’s armed force, which was established under the 1993 Oslo I Accord. Netanyahu had campaigned on unraveling peace between Israel and Palestine, and his order to open the tunnel ignited just that.15

“An alleyway, which was a holy site prior to ’67, is now a monumental plaza and is now extending under Palestinian homes in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City,” Seidemann said. “There is a massive city being built subterranean to serve the settler enterprise in the biblical narratives of Israel. It is the creeping sanctification of Jerusalem in areas that are exclusively Muslim.”

Now, with Netanyahu again in the pockets of Israeli settler groups, disrupting any possibility of peace is vital for his political survival. Temple Mount activists, like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, advocate for Jews to pray at al-Aqsa Mosque, a provocative move that disrupts the status quo and seeks to rebuild the Jewish Temple on the ruins of al-Aqsa Mosque. This movement welcomed the premier’s decision for renovation at Ribat al-Kurd.

“We congratulate the Prime Minister for addressing the vital and important care of another part of the Temple Mount walls, the rock of our existence, on the path to Israel’s full return to the Temple Mount,” the Temple Mount Administration said in a statement.16

And this is exactly what resident Abu Smineh considers is Israel’s ultimate goal with the construction: destroying an Islamic holy site, perceived as a beacon of Palestinian identity, and transforming it into a purely Jewish place.

“This is the main objective,” Abu Smineh said. “They want to build a Third [Jewish] Temple over al-Aqsa.”