An area of some of the most valuable land in Jerusalem, comprising 12,500 acres in the western part of the city where many public buildings have been constructed in recent years, was formally claimed here today as the property of the Moslem Trust Fund, an organization with headquarters in the Old City, under the jurisdiction of Jordan.
The land claimed by the Moslem Trust Fund contains the buildings of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, the Yad Vashem Memorial Authority, and numerous other public buildings. The land is valued at many millions of dollars.
The claim was filed by the Consular offices of the French Embassy which has considered itself the guardian of North African trusts in Palestine since the rule of the Turkish regime which preceded the British mandatory power.
An Israeli attorney, acting for the French consular officials, entered the claim in District Court here this morning. The claim contends that the land is owned by the Abu Median Trust under a grant acquired from the Turkish authorities 618 years ago. A Moslem leader in North Africa allegedly bought the 50,000-dunam tract in the year 1342, and the income from the use of the land purportedly has been assigned as a perpetual grant of money to aid Moslem pilgrims to Mecca, the claim asserts.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
