New City

Backgrounder The West Side Story, Part 2: The Darkening Horizon: Jerusalem’s New City under the British Mandate

In the face of rising Jewish immigration, Jewish self-separation, and the looming end of the British Mandate, Jerusalem began to implode, placing the New City in peril.

Blog Post Book Review: Karmi Memoir Tells Jerusalem Story of Loss and Rediscovery

A woman’s attempt to reconcile her English and Palestinian identities leads her to Jerusalem to search for the Qatamon home her family left in 1948.

Photo Boys Troop from the Jerusalem New City YMCA, 1938

A glimpse back in time to life and boyhood in pre-Nakba Jerusalem

Blog Post “I Wasn’t Born There; I Never Lived There, but I Was from There”

A Palestinian woman returns to Jerusalem to rediscover and reclaim her mother’s city for her.

Short Take Musrara: The New City Neighborhood That Became No Man’s Land

Musrara, a formerly New City neighborhood founded by Palestinians, had a unique fate in 1948.

Short Take Sheikh Jarrah: The Northern Gateway to Jerusalem

The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah has historically been the northern gateway to the Old City and a home to powerful Palestinian families and consulates.

Backgrounder The West Side Story, Part 1: Jerusalem before “East” and “West”

Before 1948, Jerusalem was not split between an “East” and a “West.” Rather, a cosmopolitan, multiethnic New City grew organically out of the Old City.

Personal Story The Baq‘a Zone Ghetto: A Memoir of a Palestinian Jerusalemite Who Remained in West Jerusalem after the War

Jacob Nammar, whose family established the al-Nammamreh neighborhood in al-Baq‘a, shares the trauma his family went through as one of the few Palestinian families who remained.