Israel Expanding Settler Footprint in Sheikh Jarrah with Yeshiva

In 2021, the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah made waves internationally amid joint settler and state efforts to expel Palestinians from their longtime homes. While the protests have simmered, Israeli attempts to turn Sheikh Jarrah into a Jewish settlement are far from extinguished.

On January 7, 2025, the Jerusalem District Planning Committee discussed a plan to build an 11-story yeshiva (a traditional Jewish seminary) that will cover a little more than an acre of land at the entrance of Sheikh Jarrah.1 Currently, this area serves as a parking lot for an adjacent medical center.

The plan was submitted by Ohr Somayach Institutions, a Jerusalem-based yeshiva with branches in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, and calls not only for a religious school but also a housing unit for hundreds of students and faculty.

“If constructed, the yeshiva would serve to significantly increase the number of settlers in the Palestinian neighborhood and contribute to threats on the safety of local residents, while further altering the character of the space,” Ir Amim, an Israeli nonprofit monitoring Jerusalem policy, wrote in a news release.2

Despite being filed in 2018, the plan was halted for several years over the land’s allocation. According to Ir Amim, the Jerusalem Municipality seized the land from Palestinian owners and designated it for public use, such as the construction of schools, to serve the neighborhood’s residents.3 Instead, the Jerusalem Municipality handed the property over to the Israel Land Authority in 2007 to build a yeshiva, which by definition serves only Jews. Ohr Somayach won the tender through a closed-door process but faced hurdles when Ir Amim sent a letter to the District Planning Committee in 2020 emphasizing the lack of classrooms in Sheikh Jarrah, and the need for land to be allocated for schools to solve East Jerusalem’s classroom shortage and overcrowding issues.4 This led to the pausing of the plan until now.

With the lack of public space in mind, the committee decided on January 7, 2025, that another hearing is needed before approving the project. One of the required conditions is that 40 percent of the designated area needs to be turned into open public space to serve all the neighborhood’s residents.5

Concerns remain, however, as most of the land is being reserved for Jewish students coming from abroad who will attend the yeshiva and live in the housing unit, while planning for local Palestinian schools has stalled. This unfair matter is ongoing despite a 2023 Israeli Supreme Court ruling that demanded the municipality and Ministry of Education devise an outline plan for building more schools in East Jerusalem. Two years since the court’s verdict, the municipality and state have only asked for extensions to the requirement instead of submitting a plan.6

“The city was supposed to start building schools wherever there were plots of land for public use. So, the fact that they took a plot of land for public use in a neighborhood where there’s a shortage of classrooms, and are building a yeshiva, exacerbates the severity of that move,” Laura Wharton, a member of Jerusalem’s Municipal Council, told Jerusalem Story, calling the plan an “outrage.”7

Wharton noted there are members of Jerusalem’s council who do support this initiative.“Not for religious reasons or because of their ties to the yeshiva,” Wharton said. “But because it’s like putting a stake in the ground to bring in more settlers.”

“They want to chase all Palestinians out of the city and are encouraging settler groups, wherever they be, to move into Palestinian neighborhoods,” she added.

The yeshiva plan isn’t the only settler project transforming Sheikh Jarrah. In the last year, the municipality expanded an Israeli war memorial located next to the Sheikh Jarrah Mosque, turning it from a column atop a leveled piece of land to an Israeli flag surrounded by walls of limestone and an iron fence.

The renovation is part of a larger settler venture titled “The Northern Trail,” a touristic walking route from Damascus Gate to Sheikh Jarrah that aims to highlight the city’s Jewish heritage while disregarding its Palestinian history. The project is the brainchild of the settler organization Reshit Jerusalem in collaboration with the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Tradition. Reshit is run by Tzachi Mamou, who represents Nahalat Shim’on, a settler group responsible for displacing hundreds of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah through demolitions and eviction lawsuits. The yeshiva is planned to be built right across from the memorial.

“The renewed attempt to advance construction of the yeshiva should therefore be seen in the context of these measures as yet another move to bolster settler presence and transform the neighborhood into more of an Israeli space,” Ir Amim said.8

Saleh Diab, a Sheikh Jarrah resident who is facing expulsion, says the revived yeshiva plan is due to Israel’s war on Gaza and the wider Middle East—allowing Israel to seize more Palestinian land in Jerusalem while the international community is distracted by violence elsewhere.

“You don’t have law after October 7, 2023,” Diab told Jerusalem Story,9 referring to the 2023–24 Gaza War.

“The families [in Sheikh Jarrah] are worried and afraid,” Diab said. “But after October 7, they’re afraid more and more.”

To him, Sheikh Jarrah is the first stop in this settler-state attempt to Judaize East Jerusalem—seeing the neighborhood as a gateway to further settler expansion and expulsion of Palestinians.

“They want to steal all the land in Sheikh Jarrah and after that, Wadi Joz; after that, Jabal Zaytun and Ras al-Amud, Jabal Mukabbir, and the Old City,” said Diab, who is heading back to court in February of 2025 over his looming expulsion.

“Now, Israel can make it what they want. Nobody can tell them nothing.”