I Am Jerusalem

John N. Tleel’s memoir I Am Jerusalem (Jerusalem: self-pub., 2000, 284 pp.) covers the Palestinian experience of living in Jerusalem during the Colonial British Mandate and the early decades of Israel’s military occupation. As Tleel states in the introduction, he wanted to describe the changes that befell Jerusalem between 1939 and 1999 and to document specific conditions and events before they are forgotten. He explains that he chose to write in English (which is neither his first nor second language) to reach the widest possible audience.

Another focus of the memoir is his church. As a prominent member of the Greek Orthodox community, Tleel was intimately involved in his community’s affairs. Many of the stories he shares are about his interactions with the church hierarchy, the role of the church in the community, and topics that would be of interest to anyone who cares about the history of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, such as the 1964 meeting between Patriarch Benedictos and Pope Paul IV. Various church messages are included as appendixes.

Tleel was born in 1928 to a Greek mother and a Palestinian father who could trace his family roots in Jerusalem for 300 years. His surname denotes the family trade, goldsmith, which had been in the family for generations. Until 1948, his family had lived in Musrara near the Notre Dame hospice.

He remembers the years during which Britain was preoccupied with World War II as being “the best and most peaceful of my life.”1 This is how he remembers the war years from the vantage point of Jerusalem: employment was high and so was the cost of living. Food was rationed. There were a few cars in the city, but they were “immobilized” to save on fuel; doctors and a few other professionals were exempt from this restriction.2 Night curfews and blackouts were imposed on the city. Tleel recalls that people were glued to their radios; not everyone had one, and so people congregated at the homes of those who did and listened to the news together, including banned Arab stations from Berlin and other places. The British paved new roads, primarily for the benefit of British troops. German and Italian nationals were arrested and placed in detention camps as prisoners of war.3 When the war was over, he recalled, “soldiers danced and drank in the streets of Jerusalem.”4

With the end of one war came the preparation for another. Tleel lists the terrorist operations perpetrated by Zionist militias to depopulate Arab Jerusalem: the bombings of the Semiramis Hotel, the King David Hotel, and the Palestine Post, among many others, culminating in the massacre of the residents of Deir Yasin village.

During those tense years, the British Mandate authorities divided parts of the city into zones and set up checkpoints; entry into the zones was restricted to those who resided in them. Tleel remembers that Palestinian activists searched residents returning from Jewish parts of Jerusalem, to make sure that they were observing the boycott of Jewish businesses. If they were not, their purchased items were confiscated.

In November 1945, Tleel went to Lebanon to study dentistry at the French Faculty of Beirut (Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth). The field of study was something he fell into as his father and older brother were dentists, and they convinced him that it would offer a solid livelihood. At the university, he describes friendly relations between professors and the small student body that included Poles, Armenians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Egyptians; some of his professors visited Jerusalem and knew his family.

An interesting story he tells concerns food shortages. When he was planning to visit his family in Jerusalem, he asked his professor, a Frenchman, whether he wanted anything from Jerusalem, and the professor asked for powdered eggs; they were readily available in Jerusalem but not in Paris, and the professor wanted to send them to his relatives, who had mentioned the deprivation. There was no shortage of powdered eggs in Jerusalem.

When the British Mandate ended and Israel was established, Tleel was in Beirut preparing for the qualifying exams that preceded his final year in the dental program. Listening to Arabic radio stations, he had been confident that Arab armies would not abandon Palestine. His description of his miscalculation is framed in very personal terms:

On his first visit home since the division of Jerusalem, he observed: “The face of Jerusalem did not look the same to me. A blackness had settled over it, and the change was tangible.”6 Access to the Old City had been modified: Jaffa Gate, the New Gate, and Zion Gate were shut with thick walls, while Bab al-Asbat and Bab al-Maghariba were accessible to cars.

Like many Greek Orthodox and other families, the Tleels took refuge at the Convent of St. Basileios and at the Greek monastery before taking over the home of a relative who was relocating to Amman, Jordan. The church opened its properties to Jerusalemites who found themselves homeless, and so did the Franciscans, Armenians, and Lutherans. Some provided entertainment in the form of films, before there were movie theaters. As Tleel recalls, movie theaters were set up in Ramallah before they were available in Jerusalem. During the period of Jordanian rule, from 1948 to 1967, the first movie theater in Jerusalem was al-Nuzha; later the more comfortable al-Hambra and al-Quds cinemas were opened. (Al-Quds cinema was later restored and renovated into Yabous Cultural Centre).

Upon his graduation in 1949 as a not-quite 21-year-old, Tleel returned to Jerusalem to start his career as a dentist, which coincided with his life as a refugee.7 But the city he returned to was nothing like the city he had left in 1945. Half a century later, he reflected on the Jerusalem he found on his return:

Living in the Old City required mental adjustments. For Tleel and others, they attended school and church in the Old City but would not have chosen to live there; he had grown up outside the ancient city walls, where houses were spacious and comfortable. After the Nakba, however, they had to accept housing where they could find it. He describes living in cramped quarters, sharing a bathroom with other families, and negotiating steep steps every day to get to his home. Over time (and as some families moved out), he renovated and expanded his living space. His parents had not lived to see that; he notes that like all refugees, and until they died, they had lived with the hope of returning to the home they lost in 1948.

As the son of an established dentist, Tleel benefited from his father’s connections. His father was the dentist of renowned Palestinian nationalist Haj Amin al-Husseini, who used to ride his white horse to his dental appointments. When Tleel established himself, members of that family turned to him for treatment, as well as the Greek Orthodox Church clergy and Carmelite nuns. When he went to treat the nuns, three doorbell rings signified his arrival.

In the 1950s, Tleel became involved with the Jerusalem branch of the scouts movement; he headed the branch in 1956 and one year later was appointed Local Greek Boy Scouts Commissioner, in part in recognition of the scout magazine To Triphyllo (Al-Zambaka), which he founded in 1952 as a hobby. Developing the publication from a typed bulletin into a glossy color magazine eventually became a hobby that was overly time-consuming and complicated to maintain, and it ceased publication in 1973.

Tleel describes the Jerusalem that took shape in the 1950s:

Writing in 1999, he could say that he was nostalgic for those days when people felt free and could travel abroad through Qalandiya airport without restrictions.

When war broke out in June 1967, Jerusalemites stayed put: “We learned our lesson in 1948.”10 He personally seemed to feel protected by “what the Old City stands for: the Monasteries, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the other holy shrines all very close and around us. Our ultimate protection emanates from that monotheistic heritage.”11 In fact, Jerusalem was conquered “without a real military confrontation.”12 

No one in Tleel’s immediate circle seemed to believe that the Israelis could win a battle with Arab armies; they never recovered from the shock of that error, Tleel claims.

When a ceasefire was announced, Tleel went to examine the damage in the Old City. He saw burnt cars, bloodstains, and smelled corpses that had just been removed. But more than the sights, he “felt that the atmosphere of Jerusalem had changed. The feeling of being under a forced rule and defenseless, the feelings of uncertainty and insecurity, cost us a lot. It was not just the loss of the city.”13 

Soon they would hear frequent reports of Iooting by gangs of Israeli youth, though not nearly as systematic as the looting that occurred in the aftermath of the Nakba.

Tleel contrasts the empty streets with their congestion just a few weeks earlier, during Easter. (He describes that joyous event in great detail, presumably for the benefit of Western Christians who might be interested.)

Residents saw the bodies of dead Jordanian army soldiers in the street; some residents were forced by the Israelis to dig trenches and bury them. Demolitions in the Old City began before the war ended. He recounts trying to assist a tourist who needed directions to a spot in the Old City and then finding himself ill at ease.

Although he does not refer to it by name, he is describing the Moroccan Quarter, ethnically cleansed and bulldozed while the war was still ongoing.

In addition to the erasure of the Moroccan Quarter, shops and homes near the Armenian Quarter were bulldozed, and people were made homeless. Some cars were damaged; others were confiscated or stolen. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Greek Orthodox Chapel were vandalized and desecrated more than once. (Two years later, a “crazy” tourist was accused of setting fire to the al-Aqsa Mosque.) Soon Israelis thronged to shops and bought everything in sight, emptying out stores. Jerusalemites were scandalized by the sight of physical intimacy between young Israelis in the streets and attempts to enter holy places while dressed in what Arabs considered unsuitable attire.

Within three months, Israel had conducted a census of Jerusalemites and issued blue and white identity cards to them. Palestinians soon learned the limits of these ID cards, which entitled holders to move within Israel but also labeled holders as “returning residents” rather than as nationals. They had to pay taxes even though they did not receive the same services as Israeli nationals. When they travel out of the country, their travel documents are valid for one year and can be extended for one more year; before leaving the country, they must secure a reentry permit if they plan to return. At the airport, the identification card identifies them as different from other residents. At the bridge, too, they need a permit to cross, and their ID cards remain on the Israeli side of the bridge, which they pick up when they return (see Precarious, Not Permanent: The Status Held by Palestinian Jerusalemites (Pt. 2)).

Tleel recalls that the city’s mayor at the time, Ruhi al-Khatib, visited his home to tell the Tleels that he had just been dismissed by the Israelis as mayor of what was henceforth to be referred to as East Jerusalem. Soon thereafter, he was summarily deported to Jordan, among the first of many Palestinians to suffer that fate after Israel’s 1967 occupation.

Like many Jerusalemites who had to leave their comfortable homes in what became West Jerusalem after the Nakba, Tleel availed himself of the opportunity provided by the 1967 war to visit his childhood home in Musrara. He was deeply disappointed to see houses in ruin, and streets now claimed by unfamiliar faces. He located his home and talked to the Jewish Israeli woman who lived in it; she described how she bought out the families who had shared the home with her, until she finally lived in it alone. Her emphasis was on her personal ingenuity and patience. It did not seem to register with her that she was describing her assertion of control over the Tleel family home into which his father had put his savings, the loss of which had caused the family great distress.

Some of Tleel’s political positions were surprising. For example, he approved of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s overtures to Israel, which at best might have resulted in autonomy for Palestinians; understandably Palestinians hoped for more than that, and reading his account in 2025, when the very presence of Palestinians in Palestine is under attack, does not change that fact. Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel had major adverse implications for the entire Arab world, which Tleel does not mention. Writing this memoir in 1999, he had an opportunity to ponder the implications of the neutralization of Egypt on subsequent events, most notably Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon just a few years later. Tleel meets with Israeli “liberals” who, in typical colonial fashion, lament the absence of Palestinian leaders (as though Israel itself had ever been willing to negotiate); Tleel seems to think that leaders require elections to be identified, and in his view, the elections that matter are those of 1996. The truth is, Israel has assassinated, deported, jailed, or coopted any Palestinian with leadership potential, within the borders of Palestine and abroad, facts that Tleel doesn’t mention. He suggests that the Israeli rush to build settlements was prompted by fear that Israel might be coerced to reach a settlement leading to Palestinian statehood, in the wake of the Camp David Agreement; again, by the late 1990s, it was clear that Israel was prompted less by fear and more by greed and a sense of colonial entitlement and entrenchment.