Sheikh Jarrah was one of the quietest and most elegant neighborhoods in Jerusalem. You could walk around at midday and hear nothing but the chirping of birds. The houses had small gardens and long walkways covered with grapevines, and the scent of jasmine, lemons, and oranges wafted from almost every home.

Now, the once pristine neighborhood has been transformed into a noisy area teeming with settlers who behave in ways that suggest that they are filled with hatred toward the neighborhood’s Palestinian residents and everything Arab.

“That’s why residents have chosen to stay in their homes, fearing they could lose them at any moment to Israeli settlers,” says Nasser Abd al-Hayy, 65, Palestinian resident of Sheikh Jarrah.1 “The neighborhood has lost everything beautiful, replaced by ruin and destruction,” he laments.

He looks around and points to an Israeli flag flying over a nearby house from which his neighbors were forcibly expelled. “I can’t sleep at night for fear that settlers will storm my house. I’m so tired, I swear to God. Our lives are no longer the same; neither our nights nor our days are the same. I pray to God to take my soul before I live to see the day I’m evicted from my home. I swear I can’t bear it.” He stops speaking, because the words get stuck in his mouth and tears betray him, covering his face.

Umm Mahmoud, 72, who owns a house opposite Abd al-Hayy’s, says that she lives in constant terror. The settlers have turned her and her disabled husband’s life into hell, harrassing them in every way imaginable to get them to move out. “They have damaged the water pipes and thrown garbage at us,” Umm Mahmoud shares, “because our house is adjacent to a house that the settlers seized.”2

Like Abd al-Hayy, Umm Mahmoud and her husband live in fear. “My husband even prefers not to leave the house to visit the doctor for fear that the settlers will seize our house,” she intimates. “He has lived in this house for more than 60 years with his mother and brothers. We got married here and dream of spending the rest of our life in the house that holds all these beautiful memories.”

“How beautiful our neighborhood was, and how much its residents loved each other,” she continues. “I still remember that the main street in Sheikh Jarrah was the only street that connected the northern and southern parts of the West Bank, especially Ramallah. There was a bus line to Ramallah called the Express line that started from Bab al-Amud and did not stop until it reached the heart of Ramallah.” To this day, there is a famous grocery store called Express Grocery along the route, because the bus used to pass in front of it.

Sheikh Jarrah is one of the first Palestinian neighborhoods built outside the walls of the Old City at the end of the 19th century. This neighborhood, which covers an area of more than 800 dunams, is home to more than 38,000 Palestinians.

Sheikh Jarrah is considered one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in East Jerusalem, and it is a favorite among diplomats and Western missions. This explains the large concentration of consulates—all of which were Arab prior to 1967—in Sheikh Jarrah, even today, including the British, Spanish, Turkish, Swedish, Belgian, Italian, and French consulates, among others. Perhaps appropriately, this section of Sheikh Jarrah is known as the Consulate District and is not far from the famous American Colony Hotel, the former villa of Rabah al-Husseini, which also dates back to the late 19th century (see From Utopia to Luxury: The Transformative Tale of the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem).

As the Palestinian Jerusalemite writer Mahmoud Shuqair says in his numerous books about Sheikh Jarrah, the neighborhood was the center of Palestinian literary activity in the city, housing the headquarters of many magazines and newspapers, including the leftist al-Tali‘a newspaper, which Shuqair edited for a period of time. The newspaper’s headquarters were in front of the Khalil al-Sakakini School, which was formerly the residence of King Abdullah I when he visited Jerusalem. In fact, on the day of his assassination at al-Aqsa Mosque on July 20, 1951, the king had just been in the building.3

In his book The Nakba: The Nakba of Jerusalem and the Lost Paradise, 1947–1949, Palestinian journalist, politician, and historian Aref al-Aref—who lived through the Nakba himself (see Aref al-Aref)—described the strategic importance of Sheikh Jarrah. Located on Nablus Road directly north of the Old City: “The Zionists focused most of their attention on the neighborhood in 1947 . . . When they seized it, they controlled the Jerusalem-Nablus road and cut off all contact between the Arab part of the city and the northern part of Palestine.”4

“Most of the residents of this neighborhood are from the upper class, and most, if not all, are wealthy and hold a prominent position in society,” al-Aref goes on. “If they were eliminated or displaced, the city would be deprived of a resource that could sustain it with both intellect and wealth.” Accordingly, al-Aref explained: “This is what prompted the Israelis to consider not only harassing them but also seizing their neighborhood.”5

The differences between the northern and southern parts of Sheikh Jarrah are clear. The upscale northern part is home to beautiful historic and modern buildings, most of which are rented to foreign consulates. Adjacent to the diplomatic missions are several restaurants and hotels, including the Ambassador Hotel. The area also once featured the Mount Scopus Hotel, which was converted into the headquarters of the Red Cross. Nearby is the Office of the Quartet, the now outdated headquarters of the representatives of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, established in 2002 to support Palestinian economic and institutional independence and the two-state solution.

The southern part of the neighborhood is targeted by settler groups and the Israeli government; its Palestinian residents face constant threats of forcible expulsion. The most threatened sections are two small streets on either side of Nablus Road: Kubaniyyat Umm Haroun and Karm al-Ja‘uni (see Israel Aiming to Supplant Umm Haroun Area of Sheikh Jarrah with Settler Skyscrapers and Israel Plans New 30-Acre Settlement to Grab the Northern Edge of Sheikh Jarrah, Completing Its Encirclement).

Rampant and violent settler activity in Sheikh Jarrah even finds its way into Palestinian literature. In his latest novel, Half Ashkenazi,6 Jerusalem novelist Aref al-Husseini creates an entire story set in Sheikh Jarrah: Itzvika is mixed, half Sephardic and half Ashkenazi, and his wife is Ronit, daughter of Ashkenazi physician Haim Ehrlich, who originally settled in Palestine. The couple manage to take over the house of Ruqayya, a Palestinian woman, in Sheikh Jarrah with the help of a Jewish settler group. Ronit does not like Ruqayya’s authentic kitchen and expands it. In the process, the couple find a cave buried under the house’s courtyard. While Itzvika fears the Antiquities Authority will appropriate the house, Ronit takes it as an opportunity to transform the cave into a religious shrine for a rabbi said to have lived there 1,500 years ago so that Jewish tourists from all over the world could visit and donate. Itzvika and Ronit thus become religious leaders in the growing settler community.7

While fictional, al-Husseini’s storyline is in fact the reality of many Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah. Indeed, in 2021, settler groups seized the Abu Jibneh cave in the heart of the neighborhood and transformed it into a religious site: the alleged tomb of Shimon HaTzadik, a Jewish high priest from over 2,000 years ago.8 What started as a simple ritualistic celebration among settlers in the area has received the full support of the Israeli government. Now, during religious events at the site, the heart of the city is closed, and passage through Sheikh Jarrah is prohibited to all but Jews and the residents of the neighborhood.

Sheikh Jarrah is a neighborhood that used to live in peace and is now searching for peace. It is a neighborhood located in a central and strategic location connecting Jewish settlements. As a result, Palestinian communities in the heart of Jerusalem continue to be isolated and fragmented. Though the details of displacement, dispossession, and settler violence differ, the story of Sheikh Jarrah is also the story of many Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem—Silwan, Wadi al-Joz, Jabal Mukabbir, and many more.