Police Forcibly Close and Seize Musrara Café near Damascus Gate

This week, Muhamad Quastiro, manager of the Musrara Café, was forcibly expelled from the place that had provided his family’s livelihood for three generations—over 50 years.

After exhausting all legal avenues for appeal of the decision, Muhamad kept opening the shop every day despite being advised that the expulsion would take place between November 10 and 24, 2024. He was supported by Israeli and Palestinian activists.

On Sunday, November 17, 2024, during the day, armed police arrived, forcibly broke the padlock, and began removing all the furniture and other belongings and dumping them out on the sidewalk.

According to Ir Amim, the café premises are likely being turned over to an Israeli settler organization, whether to rent or to own.1

The shop is in a prime location, just steps away from the Damascus Gate, the main entry to the Old City of Jerusalem and a central touchpoint space for the Palestinian community.

The Quastiro family had rented the premises in 1954 from the Jordanian government, and they had protected tenancy status, a status deriving from an Ottoman-era law. After 1967, Israel abolished this right from that point on, but for those who already had this status, Israel passed the Third Generation Law, according to which once the grandchild of the original tenant dies, the next generation loses the protection.

In the case of the Musrara Café, the property is claimed to have been owned by Jews before 1948, and so has been managed by the General Custodian since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. However, there was no party claiming the property at the time it was seized. According to Ir Amim, this means that “even according to the discriminatory Israeli law, there is no requirement for the Quastiro family to be evicted since there has been no claim filed by past Jewish owners (or their heirs) to retrieve the property.”2

The café is located on the main road that divides Palestinian East Jerusalem from Jewish West Jerusalem. Given that the Israeli government is fixated on erasing that divide in order to claim “one united” Jerusalem forever and thus sweep aside the possibility of ever sharing the city with a future Palestinian state, the humble little café is in fact a prime piece of real estate.

The café is also only steps away from another Palestinian community touchpoint, the Bab al-Amud gate and plaza. This space has seen increased securitization for the past several years and the installation of intensive presence of surveillance cameras and security forces as part of the Mabat 2000 system. As well, the City Center Plan and its Silicon Wadi Plan would completely transform the area that is referred to as “the beating heart of Palestinian East Jerusalem,” erasing a socioeconomic and educational hub for the Palestinian community. The seizure of the café must be understood in light of all these parallel initiatives.

Jerusalem Story spoke with Muhamad outside the shop after the expulsion was over and he was locked out of his family café forever. He said:

He added, “We have been present since before the establishment of the State of Israel. We are here since 1945, before the creation of Israel. They don’t just want Musrara [Café] . . . There was a period of time when the settlers had someone, or some law, to stand in their way, but unfortunately today, these racist laws are what are used against us. The law of the third generation, the laws that no longer protect us, these Israeli laws in this past recent period have stripped us of rights as renters, and given these rights to the settlers, and in the end, given the property to the settlers.”