Sheikh Jarrah

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Sheikh Jarrah

Sheikh Jarrah ( Hebrew שייח 'ג'ראח, Arabic الشيخ جراح, DMG aš-Šaiḫ Ǧarrāḥ , English Sheikh Jarrah ) is a district of Jerusalem or East Jerusalem , which is predominantly inhabited by Arabs.

history

Sheikh Jarrah was built on the slope of Mount Scopus and named after the emir of the same name , who was buried in the area in 1201.

On April 13, 1948, one month before the establishment of the State of Israel, a supply convoy was attacked on the way to Hadassah Hospital. The British Army, although only a few hundred yards away, did not intervene for six hours. 77 Jewish doctors, nurses and patients were killed in the massacre.

From 1948 to 1967 the quarter was on the demilitarized buffer zone on the Jordan / Israel border . The only crossing was the Almond Tree Gate, which was on the Israeli side until 1952, from then on in the buffer zone. The name comes from the owner of the house next to which the passage was built. The transition was only possible for diplomatic personnel.

In the 1960s, the neighborhood became a popular spot for consulates and international organizations, including the British and Turkish consulates on Nashashibi Street and the consulates of Belgium, Sweden and Spain, which, along with the UN mission, were in Saint George Street lie. The German Friedrich Naumann Foundation also has its Jerusalem office here. Likewise, a relatively large number of long-established Arab-Palestinian families still live here, many of whom are at the center of current Israeli-Palestinian property disputes.

Sights include the royal tombs and the tomb of Simon the Righteous ( Hebrew קבר שמעון הצדיק).

Sheikh Jarrah's most important buildings include the St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital and St. Joseph's French Hospital, but also the Anglican St. George's School , built in 1898, and the Jerusalem American Colony . The Shepherd Hotel , built in the 1930s for Mohammed Amin al-Husseini , the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was demolished on January 10, 2011, except for a small, listed part. The area freed up in this way is intended to be used for housing by Jewish settlers. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU Foreign Affairs Representative Catherine Ashton protested against this move.

The route of the first line of the Jerusalem light rail, opened in 2011, runs along the western boundary of the district with the stops Damascustor , Shivtei Israel, Shim'on Ha-Tsadik and Ammunition Hill.

Between 2011 and 2017, there was a significant reduction in the internationally condemned construction activity for Jewish residents in East Jerusalem, for which diplomatic influence on the Israeli government was blamed. That changed when US President Donald Trump took office , followed by declarations by right-wing Israeli politicians that the phase of frozen construction was over. The occupied district of Sheikh Jarrah was at the center of the controversial discussion about Jewish building projects with several projects that provided for the compulsory departure of the previous Palestinian residents of the affected buildings. In September 2017, police forces evicted a Palestinian family from their house in Sheikh Jarrah, which they had lived in since the 1960s, for the first time since 2009 after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Jewish plaintiffs' claims to property were valid. In May 2018, the Israeli peace organization “ Peace Now ” protested against the threat of further expulsions of Palestinians in favor of Jewish settlers in the residential areas of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan and complained about the Israeli government's support for settler organizations .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John M. Oesterreicher, Anne Sinai: Jerusalem . John Day, 1974, ISBN 0-381-98266-1 , pp. 22 .
  2. ↑ A University for Israel In: Israelnetz.de , August 26, 2018, accessed on September 7, 2018.
  3. ↑ Jerusalem: Eviction from Sheikh Sharra (Spiegel online, August 13, 2009)
  4. ^ Nir Hasson: After Long Freeze, Israel Again Promoting East Jerusalem Construction for Jews. In: Haaretz.com from July 3, 2017, accessed on November 19, 2018 (English)
  5. ↑ Palestinian family evicted from East Jerusalem home after Decades. In: Times of Israel, September 5, 2017, accessed November 19, 2018.
  6. ↑ Peace Now: Systematic dispossession of Palestinian communities in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan. News from May 27, 2018, accessed on November 19, 2018