Report: Sitting on the Plaza Steps of Damascus Gate Is Now a Ticketable Offence

February 8, 2024

-minute read

Bab al-Amud, or Damascus Gate, has long been a community space for the Palestinians of Jerusalem. They gather there, sit on the steps to drink coffee or chat with friends and family, connect, and use it as a touchstone point for celebrations (such as when Morocco advanced to the World Cup semifinals) or protest (such as during the May 2021 Unity Uprising).

This space’s significance as a community plaza far predates Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, as the photos in this Blog Post show.

Keenly aware of this, and of the collective energy the community derives from the space, the city has in recent years progressively attempted to prevent Palestinians from gathering in or using it.

For example, in February 2018, the city installed four permanent watchtower gates from where security forces surveil the plaza, often hauling in detained youths to beat and harass them inside.

In October 2020, without consulting the Palestinian community, the city renamed the Damascus Gate Steps to “Hadar and Hadas Steps” in Hebrew, after Israeli border police officers Hadar Cohen and Hadas Malka, who were killed in confrontations with Palestinians at Damascus Gate in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

In 2021, the police barricaded and closed off the steps at some points during the uprising.

In February 2023, a Palestinian journalist told Amnesty International:

With the exception of the 2021 April-May uprising . . . there is no doubt that the number of protests on the steps [of Damascus Gate] has significantly gone down since the erection of the checkpoint and the watchtower. Those who demonstrate know that, even if they don’t get detained on the spot, their faces will be captured by the cameras and they can be arrested later or banned from entering Al-Aqsa for instance.

Israel uses technology as a means of controlling us, of deterring us not only from protesting but also from living our normal life. Even if you are doing nothing political, when you see all these cameras and the checkpoint, you do not feel safe. You feel that this space which has always been your favourite place in all of Jerusalem no longer belongs to you to the point that the Israeli municipality even changed the name of the area and renamed it after two Israeli soldiers. Parents warn their children against going to Damascus Gate, against doing anything that may arouse suspicion. Sometimes simply sitting on the steps may be enough for you to get into trouble.1

Blog Post A Bab al-Amud Morning

An evocative video vignette that shares the experience of a typical weekday morning on the steps of Bab al-Amud (Damascus Gate) just outside the Old City. Part of our series on Jerusalemites' favorite places in the city.

Neda, a recent graduate based in East Jerusalem, told Amnesty International in May 2022 that Damascus Gate changed radically in the past three or four years:

I used to go there like every afternoon, drink a coffee, drink tea, and enjoy it . . . after all the things that happened like last year, it just all seemed like it’s not safe for me anymore. Like, I feel like going there for me . . . It takes a lot, you know? [Almost] as if I’m going to protest like—seriously!—there, I feel like I’m being watched the whole time.2

I feel like . . . I’m being watched the whole time. Like I went [to Damascus Gate] maybe three, four times. And just like I acted very normal, you know, like when a policeman is walking next to you and you’re like “no, no, nothing to see here,” even when you didn’t do anything anyway.3

Now, while the war in Gaza offers legal cover for multi-tiered closures, we hear from residents who’ve directly experienced it that the city has declared sitting on the steps of Bab al-Amud as a “ticketable offense”—taking the attempted “transformation” of this highly symbolic space to yet a new level.

Only time will tell what this portends.

Palestinian women enjoy a moment together eating a street snack on the steps of the Bab al-Amud Plaza, August 20, 2021.

Credit:

Mays Shkerat for Jerusalem Story

Palestinian schoolboys sit on the steps outside Damascus Gate, East Jerusalem, November 25, 2015.

Palestinian schoolboys take a moment after class to relax and chill together on November 25, 2015, in the days before the plaza had three security watchtowers above and below the steps (installed in 2018).

Credit:

Mahfouz Abu Turk, APA Images