Sheikh Jarrah
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What is Sheikh Jarrah?
Sheikh Jarrah is a neighborhood in Jerusalem, located north of the Old City. Since the Six-Day War in 1967, it has been under Israeli control and the focus of land ownership disputes.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the area was divided between Jewish and Arab control. Jews in Sheikh Jarrah were forced to leave, and in 1950, Jordan settled Palestinian families in their place.
In 1972, Jewish trusts claimed the land, and in 1982, they filed a lawsuit to evict Palestinian residents. In 2003, property rights were sold to Nahalat Shimon International, which facilitated the relocation of Jewish Israelis into Sheikh Jarrah. In 2009, the organization evicted two families and moved in new Jewish residents.
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Where is Sheikh Jarrah located in Jerusalem?
Sheikh Jarrah is a neighborhood in Jerusalem located north of the Old City. After the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49, the area was divided between Jewish control in the west and Arab control in the east. Jews living in Sheikh Jarrah were forced to leave.
Following Jordan's annexation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 1950, Palestinian families displaced from Israel were settled in Sheikh Jarrah with the help of the UNRWA. These housing units were built on vacant land previously owned by Jewish trusts before the war. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Sheikh Jarrah came under Israeli control.
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What is the history of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood?
Sheikh Jarrah is a neighborhood in Jerusalem located north of the Old City. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the area was divided between Jewish control in the west and Arab control in the east. Jewish residents of Sheikh Jarrah were forced to leave.
After Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1950, Palestinian families displaced from Israel were settled in Sheikh Jarrah with the help of the UNRWA, in housing units built on land previously owned by Jewish trusts.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Sheikh Jarrah came under Israeli control. Jewish trusts laid claim to the land in 1972, and in 2003, sold their rights to Nahalat Shimon International, a U.S.-based organization. In 2008, the organization intensified legal efforts to evict Palestinian residents, and in 2009, carried out evictions.
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Who are the main groups of people living in Sheikh Jarrah?
Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, has been the center of a land ownership dispute since Israel took control in 1967. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the area was divided, and Jews in Sheikh Jarrah were forced to leave. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and settled Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, with housing units constructed on land previously owned by Jewish trusts.
In 1972, Jewish trusts claimed the land, and in 2003, they sold their property rights to Nahalat Shimon International, a U.S.-based organization. In 2008, the organization intensified efforts to evict Palestinian residents, and in 2009, they evicted families and moved in Jewish residents. This ongoing issue remains a point of conflict.
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Why has Sheikh Jarrah been the center of conflict in Jerusalem?
The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem, located north of the Old City, has been a focal point of conflict due to disputes over land ownership since it came under Israeli control in 1967 during the Six-Day War.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Jews in Sheikh Jarrah were displaced, and in 1950, Jordan settled Palestinian families displaced from Israel in their place, with housing constructed on land previously owned by Jewish trusts. When Israel took control of East Jerusalem in 1967, the trusts laid claim to the land in 1972 and, in 1982, filed a lawsuit to evict Palestinian residents. In 2003, the trusts sold their property rights to Nahalat Shimon International, which facilitated the relocation of Jewish Israelis into Sheikh Jarrah. Evictions in 2009 and a looming court ruling in May 2021 heightened tensions and violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
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How does the situation in Sheikh Jarrah affect Jerusalem and world events?
The dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, located north of the Old City, centers on land ownership and has far-reaching implications.
After the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli war, the area was divided between Jewish and Arab control. Jewish residents were forced to leave Sheikh Jarrah, and in 1950, Jordanian authorities settled displaced Palestinian families in the area.
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Sheikh Jarrah came under Israeli control. Jewish trusts laid claim to the land in 1972, and in 2003, property rights were sold to Nahalat Shimon International, which sought to evict Palestinian residents. Evictions began in 2009, escalating tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. In May 2021, a court ruling on evictions triggered significant violence. The Israeli Supreme Court intervened in March 2022, ordering a review of the land's legal ownership.
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Sheikh Jarrah, neighborhood in Jerusalem located north of the Old City. Since coming under de facto Israeli control during the Six-Day War in 1967, the neighborhood has been the center of a high-profile dispute over land ownership. The controversy heightened in 2009 when Palestinian families were evicted from the neighborhood for the first time and were replaced by Jewish families.
Location and history
The neighborhood is situated around the tombs of Simeon the Just (Shimon HaTzadik), a Jewish religious leader from the 3rd century bce who was associated with the Kneset ha-Gedola (Great Assembly), and Ḥussam al-Dīn al-Jarrāḥī, an emir of the Ayyubid dynasty in the 12th century ce. The latter tomb is located along Nablus Road, which was historically a part of the main route between Jerusalem and Damascus. In premodern times vineyards (Arabic kurūm; singular karm) and summer homes (quṣūr) for Jerusalemite notables occupied much of the area.
The area’s modern settlement followed the Ottoman Land Law of 1858, a land reform law that secured the ownership and development of private property (see Tanzimat). One of Jerusalem’s most prolific land merchants of the time, Rabāḥ al-Ḥusaynī, built a luxury villa (now the American Colony Hotel) on property adjacent to Jarrāḥī’s tomb about 1870. In 1882 Salīm al-Ḥusaynī, the mayor of Jerusalem (1879–97) and Rabāḥ’s brother, followed suit and built his own villa next door. Other members of the Ḥusaynī (Husseini) family also began building modern homes in the area, as did members of other prominent families, such as the Nashāshībīs. Meanwhile, in 1876 two Jewish trusts purchased land around the tomb of Simeon the Just. Beginning in the 1890s, the trusts built housing for religious scholars and Jewish migrants from Yemen, Syria, and Georgia.
Controversy over land ownership
The first Arab-Israeli war (1948–49) transformed the landscape of Jerusalem altogether. The area was split between Jewish control in the west and Arab control in the east. The Jews living in Sheikh Jarrah, which was located in the eastern section, were forced to leave. After Jordan annexed the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 1950, it settled in Sheikh Jarrah several Palestinian families that had been forced out of Israel. With the assistance of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), their housing units were constructed on empty land that had been owned by one of the Jewish trusts before the war.
During the Six-Day War (1967) Sheikh Jarrah came under the de facto control of Israel after its forces occupied East Jerusalem. In 1972 the Jewish trusts laid legal claim to the land they had left behind in Sheikh Jarrah, but their documentation did not satisfy the legal requirements to complete the registration process. The trusts attempted to assert ownership nonetheless, and in 1982 they filed a lawsuit to evict many of the Palestinian residents. The residents’ attorney concluded a procedural agreement, without the residents’ full knowledge or consent, that accepted their status as tenants. That procedural agreement served as the legal basis for subsequent attempts at eviction.
Litigation continued through the remainder of the century, but several decades passed before any evictions were carried out. In 2003 the trusts sold their property rights to Nahalat Shimon International, an organization based in the United States that was created to facilitate moving Jewish Israelis into Sheikh Jarrah. In 2008 the organization stepped up legal efforts to evict Palestinian residents, and in 2009 it effected the eviction of two families and on the same day it moved in new Jewish residents. In May 2021 an imminent court ruling on the eviction of four families from Sheikh Jarrah sparked a major escalation of violence between Israelis and Palestinians that left hundreds of people dead. The ruling was delayed, and in March 2022 Israel’s Supreme Court for the first time ordered the Ministry of Justice to sort out the legal ownership of the land.
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