“These Are Our Homes”: Visiting West Jerusalem’s Neighborhoods with Ibrahim Matar

“All these houses were Palestinian homes,”1 economist and author Ibrahim Matar tells a small group of friends during a walkabout in West Jerusalem on June 10, 2023.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Matar shares accounts about Jerusalem’s middle class before the Nakba while pointing out the gracious houses one sees throughout the West Jerusalem neighborhoods Talbiyya, al-Baq‘a, and Qatamon—neighborhoods that were Palestinian before Israel’s establishment in 1948. He notes how these homes are identifiable by their distinctive architecture and are in fact Palestinian properties confiscated by the state and given to Jews.

Born in 1943, Matar was the founder and chairman of the Department of Business and Economics at Bethlehem University and was later the senior program officer with the Italian Cooperation Office of the Italian Consulate General in Jerusalem. After his retirement, he decided that he had a duty and responsibility to convey to others the effects of the traumatic wars of 1948 and 1967 on Palestinian families, as he learned them from loved ones and also recollected from stories he heard during his childhood.

Almost 80 years old, he has made it his mission to record the stories of Palestinians in Jerusalem who lost their homes in West Jerusalem—his friends, acquaintances, and others. Matar credits his late mother-in-law, Margueritte Nakhleh Catan Farah, for making him aware of the ordeal of Palestinian families living in the area called the New City, which Israel seized and then renamed West Jerusalem after the war, in 1948. She witnessed the forcible expulsion of friends, neighbors, and family members by the Jewish forces in Talbiyya. She herself had fled for temporary safety during the 1948 War. She was never able to return to her home (see The West Side Story, Part 4: The Erasure of the New City and Its Transformation into Jewish West Jerusalem).

Accounts of property confiscation, told to Matar by others, led him to write about the private properties of Palestinian families that “the Jewish State proceeded to steal.” His book Jewish Migrant Forces’ Conquest of West Jerusalem in 1948 and East Jerusalem in 1967—A Current and Historical Review: Theft of Palestinian Properties in West and East Jerusalem by the Jewish State was published by Newman Springs Publishing in 2022. Its purpose is described on the cover as being “to prove that the bulk of the properties in Jerusalem belong to the native Palestinian citizens of Jerusalem.”

In the book, Matar delves into some of detail about the Absentees’ Property Law—1950 (see How Israel Applies the Absentees’ Property Law to Confiscate Palestinian Property in Jerusalem).

Matar explains that the law provided the basis for Israel to confiscate the homes and other property of Palestinians who fled (temporarily, they thought) from the violence in their neighborhoods in 1948. When the hostilities ended, Israel passed laws that banned them from returning (see The West Side Story).

He recounts that Palestinians owned villas, apartments, houses, and commercial properties in various areas of Jerusalem, including Upper and Lower Baq‘a, Qatamon, the Greek Colony, the Nammariyya neighborhood, the Dajaniyya neighborhood, Abu Thawr, Talbiyya, Jurat al-‘Inab (outside Jaffa Gate), and Musrara.2 Properties in these neighborhoods, he explains, were seized by the Custodian of Absentee Property in the Israeli Ministry of Finance and sold or rented exclusively to Jews. The new Jewish occupants of these confiscated homes walked into fully (and often expensively) furnished homes; the rightful owners, who were prevented from returning and reclaiming their property, were often left destitute.

Matar walks a small group of friends around West Jerusalem, sharing details about homes and neighborhoods as they go. He is eager to share what he knows and has learned from his research for the book.

In Upper Baq‘a, Matar stops along the way and tells the group: “You must know al-Wa‘ri family, the ones known for their great shawarma place close by al-Zahra Street. They had their property right here. This area is named after them; al-Wa‘riyya neighborhood. All this property was seized by the Custodian of Absentee Property and sold [or given] to Jews.”

He mentions names of Palestinians, some well-known, others less so. The pioneering doctor Tawfiq Canaan lost his home in Talbiyya; perhaps as valuable as the home was his extensive personal library and three manuscripts he was readying for publication. Meanwhile, the real estate developer Nakhleh Catan was the first Palestinian to build a home in Upper Baq‘a (in 1903), which was likewise seized by Israel. After the war, Catan resettled in Jericho.