Under the guise of “urban renewal,” the Jerusalem Development Authority is planning to demolish part of the historic Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and replace it with a new Jewish neighborhood with hundreds of high-rise apartments on a plot of 17 acres (4 dunums).1 The area in question is called Umm Haroun and it lies west of Nablus Road. The Jerusalem Development Authority is a joint agency of the Jerusalem Municipality and Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Heritage Ministry that promotes the city’s economic development.

The proposed plan, TPS 1237767, was opened through the Jerusalem Planning Office in December 2024 and has now passed through several of the initial stages of the planning process. On May 21, 2025, it was deposited to the Jerusalem District Committee by the Jerusalem Local Planning Committee, albeit with considerable requests for changes. This body now reviews and considers the plan, but no date for a hearing has yet been set.

If the District Committee approves the plan, it will then be deposited for public review for any objections for 60 to 90 days. After that, the plan enters effect and building permits can be issued for construction to begin.

If approved, TPS 1237767 will entail demolishing some 40 one- and two-story Palestinian homes in the Umm Haroun section of Sheikh Jarrah and building 15 new four- and six-story buildings for residential and public (Jewish) use, as well as two high-rise apartment buildings for Jews at the neighborhood’s western edge, the taller of which would reach 30 stories. In total, the plan would provide 316 housing units for Jews, 0 for Palestinians. The new skyscrapers will comprise a large Jewish settlement called Nahalat Shimon.2 About 45 Palestinian families are at risk of expulsion from their homes and from the neighborhood as a whole.3 No alternative housing has yet been offered to them.

Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli nonprofit that monitors geopolitical developments on the ground in Jerusalem, expressed his alarm at these developments in a post on X: “For the first time since 1967, the Government of Israel INTENDS TO RAZE A PALESTINIAN [sic] IN EAST JERUSALEM, DISPLACE ITS RESIDENTS AND BUILD AN ISRAELI SETTLEMENT IN ITS STEAD. This is without precedent, We are going places where we never dared to go in the past . . . Today, the Government of Israel no longer hides behind the settler organizations. It is the Government of Israel that will raze an entire Palestinian neighborhood, displace all its residents and build grotesque 24–30 story towers on the ruins.”4

With history and structures that date from the 12th century, in 1865, Sheikh Jarrah became a Palestinian neighborhood of palatial luxury homes for notable Palestinian families such as the Nashashibis and Husseinis who sought more space and verdant rural vistas outside the crowded Old City walls (see, for example, The Unusual Origins of an Iconic East Jerusalem Hotel).

Before 1967, Sheikh Jarrah was also sought after as a site for many Arab diplomatic missions, earning it the name “the Consuls Quarter.” For example, the Egyptian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Saudi, and Syrian consulates were located here. Palestinian families would rent out their homes to these governments. After the war, the Arab governments no longer had representation in the area that Israel considered to be under its sovereignty, but other consulates remained, including the Turkish, French, Spanish, and Irish.5

Some buildings in the area are historic buildings whose loss would erase an important era of the city’s pre-state history. “The plan for a 30-story building in Sheikh Jarrah, a 19th-century neighborhood with single-story buildings, is absurd,” Laura Wharton, a Jerusalem city council member, commented to Haaretz in February.6 In 1891, a small neighborhood for 40 religious impoverished Yemenite and Sephardi Jews, Nahalat Shimon, was established in this area. When Jordan took over the area after the 1948 War, these Jews were ordered by the British to leave to West Jerusalem, where they were all compensated by the state for their lost properties.7

The area has long been eyed by settlers seeking to forcibly displace Umm Haroun’s residents through expulsion proceedings using Israel’s discriminatory Legal and Administrative Matters Law (1970), which allows alleged Jewish owners and their heirs to reclaim property lost during the 1948 War, even though they were compensated for the loss at the time. (Palestinians are not afforded the same opportunity to reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem.) While some residents of Sheikh Jarrah have been forcibly expelled through this mechanism, Umm Haroun residents had largely been spared widescale displacement until now, because of their protected tenant status.

“At its core, the urban renewal scheme is a thin guise for the Israeli authorities to overcome its [sic] decades-long failure to carry out mass evictions of Umm Haroun residents and circumvent the challenges resulting from their protected tenancy rights,” Ir Amim, an Israeli rights group monitoring Jerusalem policy, wrote in its press release on the plan.8

The planned settlement comes almost four years after settlement of land title (SOLT) was completed in Umm Haroun in 2021. In fact, it was the first area in East Jerusalem to undergo the land registration process whereby property rights are determined after Israel unfroze land registration in East Jerusalem in 2018. The determinations are final, but the process is neither transparent nor fair. Palestinian residents were neither notified nor given a chance to prove ownership. In fact, SOLT is being used primarily to seize properties that serve key state and settler interests, regardless of Palestinian ownership or residency there (see Land Registration in Jerusalem Is a “Grand Land Theft” from Palestinians—Ir Amim’s Amy Cohen).

According to the Israeli planning rights organization Bimkom, roughly a quarter of the area of the plan is now registered to descendants of Jewish owners prior to 1948, which is under the management of Israel’s General Custodian, a unit in the Israeli Ministry of Justice responsible for handling assets that allegedly belonged to Jews before 1948. The rest of the area is registered to the Jerusalem Municipality, mostly as a result of the large land expropriations of the early 1970s.9

“Although the plan does not explicitly cite the General Custodian’s involvement, there is reason to believe that it is the driving force behind the plan,” Ir Amim wrote in its press release.10

Since 2021, the General Custodian has initiated several settlement plans on land it manages in East Jerusalem where SOLT was completed, including Givat Shaked in the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa, Kidmat Tzion in the neighborhoods of Ras al-Amud and al-Sawahira, and a settlement in Umm Lison.11

Bimkom and Ir Amim petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court against the General Custodian, arguing these actions violate its mandate. The petition will be heard in July 2025.

“It is possible that the General Custodian has concealed its formal involvement in the Umm Haroun plan due to this pending petition,” Ir Amim wrote.

If the city’s plan is approved, the General Custodian would be empowered to expel the residents, even those who have protected tenant status.12

This would be the fifth Jewish neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah planned by the General Custodian.

Munir Nusseibeh, director and cofounder of Al-Quds Human Rights Clinic, explained that the SOLT process carried out by Israel actually isn’t legitimate, according to international law.

Israel applies its laws in Jerusalem, but this violates international law, Nusseibeh told Jerusalem Story. Annexation of occupied territory is illegal under international law, and application of Israeli law in Jerusalem is null and void, Nusseibeh explained. On August 20, 1980, in the wake of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 478, condemning the annexation and denouncing any actions Israel takes to change the status quo.13

“The land title settlement that Israel has decided in East Jerusalem is a violation of all these principles, [because it] is happening according to Israel law,” Nusseibeh said.14 “The courts that decide matters related to property in Jerusalem are Israeli courts, which should not have jurisdiction over East Jerusalem, because it is occupied territory.” Even Israeli human rights organizations that oppose Israel’s measures in Jerusalem do not mention this dimension of the issue, that Jerusalem is occupied territory, he observed. Israel’s property decisions in Jerusalem produce the “absurd situation” whereby “an illegal court arrived at an illegal decision that effects war crimes in an occupied territory and crimes against humanity. This is how international law looks at it.”

“Under the veneer of an urban renewal project, the state and settlers can bypass the obstacles associated with protected tenancy,” Yazan Risheq from Grassroots Al-Quds told Jerusalem Story.15 Grassroots Al-Quds is a Palestinian organization that supports Palestinian networking and community mobilization in Jerusalem.

Israel has encircled East Jerusalem with settlements (see Settlements), and now it is building them in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, Risheq asserted. He warns the intensification of settler activity in Sheikh Jarrah will have a domino effect for the rest of East Jerusalem.

“The plan is very dangerous now, because it does not only affect Sheikh Jarrah, but also affects Wadi al-Joz and the neighborhoods around Sheikh Jarrah,” Risheq said. “[It] actually will lead to more colonial projects happening.” He expects it will lead to an expanded military and police presence in the area, too.

“The policy is that [Israel] wants the land. They don’t want the people,” Risheq added. Displacement will be achieved through the guise of an economic development plan or as a plan to improve housing for Palestinians, he said. “And so we have to ask ourselves: Why would an illegal occupation want to enhance the lives of people they occupy? People know that this is the first step toward other postponed projects. And this is the best time for the Israeli authorities to start implementing these projects, because all eyes are on Gaza. Media attention is focused on Gaza and other areas of the West Bank.”

Zionist militias and the State of Israel expelled Palestinians from historic Palestine and seized their lands to create the state. Some of those refugees and their descendants now reside in Umm Haroun. The settlement of Nahalat Shimon threatens to upend these families’ lives and turn them into refugees yet again.

Mahmoud Sao, a member of Umm Haroun’s neighborhood committee, told Jerusalem Story the community remains steadfast against Israel’s attempts to drive them out of their homes. They have lawyers and organizations supporting them and working on the case. Yet there’s a sense of foreboding when opposing the state.

“We say in Arabic, ‘If the judge is your enemy, to whom do you turn?’”16