In 1930, amid rising tensions between Arabs and Zionists living under the British Mandate, Jamal al-Bahri was killed in a struggle between Muslim and Christian Arabs over control of an Arab cemetery in Haifa. Those responsible for his death were connected with the Young Men’s Muslim Society. Al-Bahri, however, was Greek Catholic (Melkite), the editor of a Haifa-based newspaper, and president of the local YMCA. Some scholars credited the incident with “open[ing] a chasm” between Muslims and Christians (Seikaly 1995), while other insist that the incident was indicative of pre-existing tensions between the two religious communities. My research shows that while both of those claims may be partly true, the al-Bahri affair also caused serious rifts within the Arab Christian community as Melkites became hostile toward Muslims and Arab Orthodox Christians insisted on strengthening those relationships. My paper examines the al-Bahri incident in detail, looking at the origins of the conflict, including Muslim-Christian relations in Haifa prior to 1930s, the event itself, and finally the fallout from his death. While many histories of Palestine focus on the Jewish-Arab or Jewish-Muslim conflict, my focus is on the often overlooked relationship between Christian and Muslims Arabs. Some of the driving questions in my research are how had Muslim and Christian society previously managed to share the cemetery without resorting to violence? And what changed in 1930 that upset that balance? Much of the answer lies in the changing nature of public sacred space in mandate Palestine, and the effect of the British policies on land use and ownership. I am also interested in how Muslims and Christians in Haifa overcame this conflict and managed to once again be neighbors with those of a different confession. The paper is based largely on opinion columns in al-Bahri’s own paper al-Zahour (which was edited by a family member after his death) and columns in the ‘Islamic’ paper al-Jamia al-Islamia and examines the multiple perspectives on, and implications of, al-Bahri’s death. I also have lawyer files relating to the case, as well as British documents outlining the incident. I closely examine the language used in the columns and the specific arguments found in the government reports to better understand the nature of religious identification and conflict at that time.