For over a century, Palestinians have been deprived of their right to self-determination, which is “the right to freely determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development” according to their desires, beliefs, and customs.1

In 1947, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted UN Resolution 181, according to which Palestine was to be partitioned into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem being under a special international regime.2 The Palestinian people were not included in this decision-making process. Jerusalem has been a special case ever since 1948. Despite this, Israel forcibly occupied the larger western side of the city in 1948, forcibly displaced almost all Arabs from it, and incorporated it into its newly declared Jewish state. The far smaller eastern side came under Jordanian rule (see The West Side Story).

In 1967, Israel seized and occupied the rest of Jerusalem, thus claiming the entire city. Critically, right after occupation, Israel took two steps that would shape the future of Palestinian Jerusalemites: First, it expanded the area of newly occupied East Jerusalem more than 10 times, from 6.5 sq km to about 70 sq km, unilaterally incorporating 28 Palestinian villages into the city and more importantly large swaths of land (see Where Is Jerusalem?). This meant it faced a dilemma, since the Palestinians who came along with those villages and the many who had taken shelter in 1948 in Arab Jerusalem were now ending up under Israeli control, posing what Israel viewed as a “demographic threat.” Therefore, as a second step, rather than granting them citizenship, Israel declared them permanent residents, a status usually reserved for foreigners arriving to a new country from outside their homeland. Even to this day, only around 5 percent of Palestinians in Jerusalem are citizens3 (see Precarious Status).

As permanent residents, Palestinian Jerusalemites are entitled to Israeli government services. They pay taxes just as Israeli citizens do, but the state maneuvers in all sorts of ways to reduce or eliminate the benefits and services they receive in return.4 While it is beyond the scope of this Feature Story to detail all the ramifications of this imbalance, suffice it to say that the community faces precarity and deterioration across the whole gamut of their collective existence in the city: deteriorating public infrastructure, underachievement in education, unemployment, poverty, substandard public health, societal tensions, and more. All of this in a political milieu in which the authorities who have absolute unchecked power (see Representation) are determined to minimize the number of Palestinians in the city.

On top of the challenges that face all Palestinian Jerusalemites, those living in the Old City of Jerusalem encounter additional complexities and stresses, both from the environment itself as well as from the policies and attitudes of the Israeli authorities. Structurally, tall walls surround and tower over it, isolating it from the rest of the city. The buildings are old, often ancient, requiring frequent maintenance and renovation. The alleys are narrow, hindering the movement of modern vehicles. The ancient buildings were not made to withstand heavy rain, snow, or other natural disasters and can easily collapse. A drainage system is needed during heavy rains, but the Old City lacks one, and the municipality does not particularly care to provide alternatives. Homes flood, roads become unwalkable, alleys get slippery, and people are easily injured.

When a medical emergency occurs, extra time is needed for a medical team to reach the patient, not because it isn’t readily available, but because each Israeli Magen David ambulance must be accompanied by an Israeli police or security vehicle when responding to Palestinian areas of the city, significantly delaying the process.5

Palestinians are prohibited from renovating their homes, some of which date back thousands of years, making the fragile structures a safety hazard. Palestinians are then forced out, because the municipality deems the building unfit for residential purposes, fulfilling its objective of decreasing the Palestinian population in the Old City.

Amid the absence of government and municipal services and Palestinians’ complicated relationship with Israeli establishments and authorities, who supports the Palestinians of the Old City?

In Palestinian society generally, community members have long relied on each other for help on a day-to-day basis as well as in emergencies. It is a cultural norm and social value that helps Palestinians navigate situations in which authorities are absent or negligent, or their intervention would be unfavorable. This shared communal ethos means help is often made available even when one is not actively seeking it. For example, the soup kitchen in the Old City feeds about 200 families a day (1,000 mouths a day) and has been around for over 500 years (see Soup for All: A Centuries-Old Tradition of Community Care). Additionally, the Moroccan Committee in the Old City funded an initiative called al-‘aysh al-karim (an Arabic phrase that is a double entendre, meaning both “a dignified life” and “generous bread”) for 10 years where families in need received daily coupons for 10 pieces of bread.6 Palestinians in the Old City recognize the need for community care amid their unusual reality and step up to support one another.

But this communal network of assistance has rarely been studied or documented. With infinite problems plaguing the Old City, who tracks people’s needs? Who initiates projects to meet those needs? How do these initiatives reach their target population? Which needs are they able to meet?

Jerusalem Story conducted field research including interviews with many community members to find out.

We interviewed four directors of three Old City organizations (The Arab Counseling Center for Education,7 Al-Saraya Center, and Burj al-Luluq), chosen for interviews based on their roles in drafting an Old City emergency response plan (called the Old City of Jerusalem’s Emergency Plan) following October 7, 2023. From these three organizations, we also interviewed two employees, in addition to an Old City community leader from Bab Hutta, and two Jerusalemites familiar with emergency committees in Jerusalem. (Both chose to remain anonymous.) All interviews were conducted from January to March 2025.

Each of the four Palestinian neighborhoods in the Old City (Bab Hutta, al-Sa‘diyya, al-Wad, al-Nasara) has established a social committee consisting of five, seven, nine, or eleven men. Mahmoud Salaymeh, a community leader and social committee member from Bab Hutta, explained to Jerusalem Story that these men are locally elected each year to represent their communities. They must be trustworthy, well-liked, and knowledgeable of all the ins and outs of their communities to maintain healthy community dynamics. Salaymeh shared that his social committee was born out of a desire to decorate the neighborhood in preparation for the holy month of Ramadan more than 25 years ago. They then progressed to a local donation box, where they would go door-to-door and ask for nominal donations to fund a small gesture for neighborhood kids. What began as one small initiative to spread joy in their neighborhood grew into a social committee that now serves the community on a larger scale. Other neighborhoods soon followed suit.

Today, in the absence of government resources and services, these men form the body that studies the community’s potential, shortcomings, and needs.

Drawing on their relationships with local organizations in the Old City, the social committees fulfill a number of different roles, as detailed below.

In Palestinian Jerusalemite society, conflict resolution does not involve external authorities. It is the community leaders’ and elders’ responsibility to mediate between families and resolve conflicts. These local men often intervene to resolve conflicts and disagreements among families and neighborhoods.

When commonly donated items such as schoolbags, notebooks, textbooks, blankets, or space heaters are gifted to Old City Palestinians, sometimes even 100 kilograms of meat as part of Eid al-Adha zakat, social committee members know who is in most need. They are aware of each family’s socioeconomic situation, how many children are in each household, and what gift might benefit them. The committee both receives donations from donors and takes responsibility for fair distribution.8 However, these committees don’t just wait around for charity; they also take initiative.

According to Salaymeh, the four social committees reached out to the Jerusalem Electric Company (JEC, which distributes electricity generated by the Israel Electric Corporation [IEC] to East Jerusalem and other Palestinian areas in the rest of the occupied West Bank) during the war with a proposal to exempt 50 poor Old City families from one electricity bill. Due to Israel’s exploitation of a legal loophole in its tax arrangements with the Palestinian Authority (PA) according to the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, the JEC has been unable to pay its debts to the IEC, likely causing their inability to fund the requested exemptions for Old City households.9 Despite the failed attempt, Old City residents know that they have representatives looking out for their needs in the absence of an official entity. The same committees also approached organizations in their respective communities to fund the arnona tax payments for a few families from each neighborhood.

For years, these committee leaders have also used their connections to support a few Al-Quds University students by recruiting people with the financial means to cover a student’s education fees.

The committees also contact big organizations like the Welfare Association (Taawon) to provide free renovation or repair services for Old City residents who either can’t afford the costs or are unable to go through official channels to conduct such repairs.

The social committee members also coordinate efforts with local organizations to build and develop certain skills in local youth through first aid, civil defense, and mental health first aid trainings. They then organize these trainees to form and serve on emergency committees.

Emergency committees are groups of volunteers who are trained to be first responders during any applicable situations in the Old City, including emergencies. An emergency is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action.”10 Normally, this immediate action is provided by authorities, services funded by the government, or private entities specializing in a particular service. However, Jerusalem is anything but normal. Israel has no interest in providing immediate, timely, or even any kind of action. In Jerusalem, bystanders become obligated to act, because they know that authorities will not, or will be deliberately too late to arrive on the scene.

How can Palestinian Jerusalemites expect that authorities will help in an emergency, when the emergency was most likely created by the authorities themselves?

“Our goal is to spread knowledge and raise awareness for the ultimate goal of independence from Israeli institutions; they cause us the pain, so they won’t come save us from it,”11 said Rana al-Nashashibi, the director of the Arab Counseling Center for Education in the Old City.

The general sentiment toward the state of emergency in Jerusalem is that it’s the only constant in the city. Some organizations based in the Old City incorporate emergency preparedness strategies into every annual planning process within the organization.12 Not a day passes without a home demolition, administrative arrest, beating, or home invasion/expulsion against Palestinians in Jerusalem, so special measures must be taken daily. For a society living under a regime that aims to paralyze it, this is essential for survival. Community leaders prioritize sharing knowledge as widely as possible to help build a self-serving and self-sustaining society, hence their investment in emergency committee volunteers.

Like the social committees, emergency committees serve in a range of capacities.

When the municipality serves an expulsion order to an Old City family, chaos erupts (see Forcible Home Expulsions). Emergency committee volunteers are trained to help families navigate the expulsion process by, for instance, arriving on the scene and reminding them of essential items they should take with them before evacuating. Additionally, while families figure out the question of shelter, other essentials like food, water, and safety may be placed on hold. The emergency committee volunteers will not bring back the home, but they are trained in mental health first aid. They talk to the children, play a game, or engage them in an activity to distract them and prevent the development of extreme stress that could result in mental health disorders. They ask if the elders have had a bite today and bring over food if the answer is no. The volunteers provide the families of those slain by Israeli forces (shuhada) similar types of support as well. They scan the environment for any needs, and they offer emotional, human-to-human support.13

During heavy rains, volunteers trained in civil defense will help set up and operate pumps to drain out the rainwater, which, if left untreated, floods entire homes, roads, and businesses.14 They also volunteer to shop for food and supplies for the elderly, because walking on the slippery Old City stone roads is a hazard.

During Friday prayers and Ramadan tarawih prayers at al-Aqsa Mosque, volunteers wear their organizer vests and facilitate the movement of crowds. They give out water bottles and provide first aid in case of a medical emergency on the grounds.15

Once trained to intervene in emergency situations, emergency committee volunteers always stay alert. As she was walking through the Old City, a trained volunteer, who was off duty, saw a child walking at night without an accompanying adult. She stopped him to ask for his name, where his family home was, and why he was outside by himself at such an hour. She was able to gently take him back home and later got an appropriate local organization specializing in child services involved to check for any household issues that may impact the safety and security of the child. Trained volunteers are taught to detect danger and navigate local resources to prevent crisis however they can.16

The Israeli authorities generally disapprove of any initiative that builds or advances collective self-reliance and independence.17 They therefore actively impede the committees’ work, sometimes even to the point of punishing it. For example, authorities have arrested volunteers while they were distributing aid or food packages to local homes. During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020–21, the municipality did not sufficiently sanitize the Palestinian neighborhoods as it did the Jewish neighborhoods. So, the social committee leaders gathered funds to obtain sanitizing materials and sprayed the neighborhoods to ensure the safety and hygiene of their communities. Police confiscated the materials and arrested the men on the grounds that they were not authorized to sanitize these public spaces, and their materials were not approved for public use, but no alternative was provided.18

Civic volunteers can be threatened by the Israeli intelligence forces, arrested, or even killed.19 Though not always, their mere volunteering involvement in emergency committees can draw unfavorable attention from the authorities.

Social committees have been working for over 25 years to ensure that at least some residents in every nook and cranny of the Old City are equipped to respond to these situations. At some point, the social committees decided to partner with local Palestinian organizations and businesses to help streamline and better fund the social and emergency committees’ different initiatives. These organizations (see our database of Organizations on the Ground) have varying operations, but their core is serving and uplifting Palestinian society. They have well-established reputations among residents and play integral roles in the development of the community. Two such examples are briefly presented below.

During the coronavirus pandemic, organization directors heard that some Palestinian women were getting sexually harassed in quarantine centers administered by the Israeli municipality. Thus, a few organizations (Burj al-Luqluq, Palestinian Vision, and Silwan Club) stepped up to set up a quarantine center for Palestinians in the Saint George Hotel in East Jerusalem, whose owners offered the hotel for free, in service to the community.20 As described by the organization leaders, this project was highly successful and well organized.21

Another initiative local organizations collaborated on was drawing up an Emergency Plan for the Old City of Jerusalem. The plan’s objective was to safeguard the community against any emergencies or crises resulting from Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023, and continues to this writing, 20 months later. As soon as the government declared a state of war, the police closed all 13 entrances to the Old City, isolating it from the rest of the city.22 From their experiences during the pandemic in 2020, the organizations learned that the naturally isolatable structure of the Old City meant it would experience more hardship during such a time. Therefore, they devised a plan whereby local organizations could be linked with social and emergency committees so they could provide efficient, coordinated responses to any situation.23 Among the worst-case scenarios envisioned in this planning, as recounted by organizations to Jerusalem Story, were:24

• An influx of injured Palestinians from Gaza into East Jerusalem hospitals without a support system
• Palestinian workers from Gaza getting stuck in Jerusalem and ending up in limbo, their work permits suspended yet unable to cross the border back to Gaza
• War that involved missile attacks in a neighborhood without any public shelters
• Critical economic conditions due to the hermetic closure of the Old City

Each local organization took it upon itself to train emergency committee volunteers in the field in which it specializes. For instance, the Arab Counseling Center for Education hosted mental health first aid trainings, and Al-Saraya Center provided first aid trainings. Additionally, the initiative included centralizing contact information for emergency committee volunteers and community leaders to facilitate access to them during crises, identifying potential bomb shelter locations in resident homes around the Old City with the help of social committees, distributing supply and food packages, and giving grocery coupons to needy families.25

The coming together of social and emergency committees and local organizations through the Emergency Plan embodies the communal ethos which uplifts the Old City community. Reflecting on the Emergency Plan, organization directors told Jerusalem Story that in the case of an emergency, the first step will always be contacting social committee members who will, in turn, alert and deploy the emergency committee volunteers.26 The social committee members continue to be the first responders, the on-duty points of contact, and the masterminds of coordination.

The desire to care for their community propels the committees’ grassroots work, and it is what sustains it. Organization directors, who have taken responsibility to support the committees when needed, told Jerusalem Story that despite the hardships and risks, the committees persevere out of one overarching shared value: the desire to show up for their community.

The Palestinian community in the Old City survives relentless, multilayered municipal, institutional, and systemic oppression thanks to its understanding and acknowledgment of its peculiarity as well as its deep-rooted, human-to-human care and concern for one another. Palestinians in Jerusalem have refused to be paralyzed by the countless factors pushing them to give up.

The social and emergency committees doing grassroots work in the Old City are living proof that communal assistance is a community’s lifeline, and when all else fails, their will to persist is unrelenting due to their sense of responsibility to their own people.