This minaret sculpture is a simplified rendition of the minaret from the Mosque of Omar in Bethlehem, Palestine. Named after the beloved Caliph Omar bin Al-Khattab, this Mosque sits across the square from the Church of the Nativity and is reportedly the location where Omar (RA) prayed while in town to issue an edict protecting Christians and their holy sites under Muslim rule.
Since then, this space was only a small prayer chamber until, in 1860, Jerusalem's Greek Orthodox Church donated the land to Muslims in order to facilitate the construction of a masjid in Bethlehem. In 1955, the Mosque was fully renovated in the era of Jordanian regime control.