Foundations
The West Side Story
Jerusalem’s Palestinians were not always concentrated in its east side as they are today. Before 1948, Palestinians built and developed the emerging New City, and they enjoyed a cosmopolitan urban life. Here we explore how the area that is today called West Jerusalem was violently and forcibly emptied of Arabs and reincarnated as exclusively Jewish from 1947 onward.
Featured in This Topic
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.
A Palestinian Jerusalemite’s memories of growing up in Jerusalem before the Nakba, as shared with her daughter through letters in later years
The Jerusalem YMCA was the social, athletic, and cultural hub for Jerusalemites during the British Mandate years.
A glimpse back in time to life and boyhood in pre-Nakba Jerusalem
The trauma of losing home and familiar ways of being in the world lingered with author Nina Bazouzi Cullers for decades after her family left Qatamon for the Old City. A book review.
What did the 1948 War and establishment of the State of Israel mean for Palestinian Jerusalem?
The story of how Palestinian homes in Jerusalem (and elsewhere) whose owners fled in search of temporary safety were systematically looted, including their libraries, even before the war had ended
A firsthand recounting and reconstruction of a landmark trauma in Palestinian and Jerusalem history
A vivid memoir attesting to what it was like to live through the violent transformation of the New City of Jerusalem into West Jerusalem in 1947–48
Who lived in the New City Palestinian neighborhood of Qatamon, which ceased to exist as such after 1948?
The author recalls his father’s memories of his longed-for Qatamon home.
A nurse from Lebanon who married a Jerusalemite and moved to the city right before the Nakba and embraced the responsibilities thrust upon her for caring for the sick, wounded, and disabled of the city over decades
Betty Majaj, a nurse in Jerusalem, lived through the demise of the New City and its reincarnation into West Jerusalem. This is her story.
The Story in Numbers
73,256
The estimated number of Palestinians who were expelled or fled temporarily to safety from Jerusalem's New City (45,000) and from surrounding villages (28,256) throughout 1948. [1]
200
The approximate number of Palestinians who remained in Jerusalem’s New City after the 1948 War, which is less than half a percent of the original Palestinian population there. [2] They were forcibly confined to a military “security zone” known as Zone A in the Lower Baq‘a neighborhood for two and a half years, living in destitution. [3]
40
The total number of villages and towns surrounding Jerusalem that were depopulated by Zionist forces during the 1948 War. [4] Of those, 55 percent were completely destroyed. [5] Villages nearer to Jerusalem such as Deir Yasin, ‘Ayn Karim, and al-Maliha were not destroyed. [6]
28,256
The estimated number of Palestinian Arab villagers who were forcibly depopulated from these 40 villages [7]
300,000
The number of dunums that were depopulated by the Zionist forces in Jerusalem and its western region during and after the 1948 War [8]
16,324
The total area of property (km sq) classified as abandoned Arab land in Jerusalem. This was out of a total area of 26,320 km sq and included approximately 280 km sq of rural land surrounding Jerusalem. [9]
84.12
Percentage of the area of 1947 municipal Jerusalem that was conquered and annexed by Israel to the state, becoming West Jerusalem [10]
246,342
The number of Palestinians from Jerusalem and its surrounding villages and towns who were exiled in 1948 and were still registered as refugees with UNRWA nearly 50 years later, in 1997 [11]
Notes
1. Salim Tamari, “The City and Its Rural Hinterland,” in Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and Their Fate in the War, ed. Salim Tamari (Jerusalem and Bethlehem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies and Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, 2002), 79. See Palestinian Villages Depopulated in 1948 for more up-to-date information reflecting the names of two more villages, though excluding their populations. Data collected by Zochrot
2. Terry Rempel, “Dispossession and Restitution in 1948,” in Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and Their Fate in the War, ed. Salim Tamari (Jerusalem and Bethlehem: Institute of Palestine Studies and Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, 2002), 218.
3. Jacob J. Nammar, “Confined to Prison Zone A,” Born in Jerusalem, Born Palestinian: A Memoir (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press), 61–72.
4. See Palestinian Villages Depopulated in 1948.
5. Rempel, “Dispossession,” 217.
6. Rempel, “Dispossession,” 217.
7. See Palestinian Villages Depopulated in 1948.
8. Dalia Habash and Terry Rempel, “Assessing Palestinian Property in West Jerusalem,” in Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and their Fate in the War, ed. Salim Tamari (Jerusalem and Bethlehem: Institute of Palestine Studies and Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, 2002), 173.
9. Habash and Rempel, “Assessing Palestinian Property,” 173.
10. Ahmad Jadallah and Khalil Tufakji, “Documenting Arab Properties in West Jerusalem,” in Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and Their Fate in the War, ed. Salim Tamari (Jerusalem and Bethlehem: Institute of Palestine Studies and Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, 2002), 255.
11. Tamari, “The City,” 80.
Jerusalem’s New City was violently transformed and severed from the rest of Jerusalem, its Palestinian inhabitants exiled and banned from returning to this day.
A recent book describes the cultural heritage of the depopulated Jerusalem village of Lifta and the struggle of its displaced residents to thwart state plans to erase its remains.