The reality for Palestinians in Jerusalem: ‘We can’t protest for Gaza or hang a flag’

Three Israeli police checkpoints frame the entrance to Damascus Gate, through which most Palestinians access the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. They enter and leave through the impressive gate of the Ottoman era, apparently oblivious to the presence of the Israelis. “Since October 2023, I practically never go to Damascus Gate. I use other entry points. I feel better if I don’t see the police stationed there, marking the territory, making us feel so unsafe and vulnerable,” says Salma, a Palestinian sociologist and anthropologist who works for a humanitarian organization and who prefers not to give her last name.

Protected by metal railings and thick glass, these checkpoints predate the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli bombardments of Gaza. But the feeling for Palestinians of being under constant surveillance has been growing in the past two years. “Look around. It’s like we are living normal lives, that we don’t care what happens in Gaza. But it is not like that,” says Huda Imam, a cultural consultant and former director of the Center for Jerusalem Studies at Al-Quds University. “What we have today is not life. Part of us is in Gaza, but we have failed them, because we cannot demonstrate or hang a Palestinian flag on the balcony. You can do that in Spain, but we have no right here to do the same.”

Displaying a Palestinian flag is not illegal. However, the Israeli authorities — specifically, the Minister of Public Security, the ultra-nationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir — have ordered the police to ban them in public places as an act of support for terrorism. “If we went out to protest, we would lose the few rights we have, and people think twice. Life goes on, but without joy and with daily knockbacks that make you feel that you have no country, that you have nothing,” says Salma, 39, who was born in Jordan and who arrived in Jerusalem with her family in the late 1990s.

A pendant showing a map of Palestine, an unfortunate comment in a public building, or a verbal confrontation in the street are enough to lose everything. That “everything” starts with the benefits that come with the permanent resident card held by Palestinians in Jerusalem that gives them access to social security, pensions, and basic services, though not full citizen rights. The invisible border that has always existed between west and east Jerusalem — Israeli on one side, Palstinian on the other — has been felt more acutely in daily life over the past two years. “It took me a while to understand that things would never be the same after October 7. Everything is much more polarized and the exchanges between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem are more toxic, more tense,” says Salma.

“Talking to them is a waste of time and it pains me to say this because I have, or had, Israeli friends. They don’t want to see the whole picture — that is, what is going to happen to Gaza and its two million inhabitants — and they feel comfortable having a reduced image of this reality,” adds Salma, who admits that for months she has only gone to the west of the city when she needs to go to the bank or City Hall for specific procedures. “I feel scared, even though I haven’t done anything wrong,” she says.

“Progressive Judaization of the city”

When you leave the Damascus Gate behind, you enter a totally different city. There are women selling herbs and vegetables on the street. Shops offer candy, phone chargers and soccer shirts. And the owners of souvenir shops try to attract the few tourists that now come this way. The steps lead to Al Wad Street, where several Israeli police chat while watching the hustle and bustle. Dozens of surveillance cameras make sure that nothing that happens or can happen in those cobbled streets slips beneath the radar.

Stationed at the door of his shop, at the beginning of the Via Dolorosa, Saher Awad watches the coming and going of Israeli policemen, Palestinian families, Orthodox Jews on their way to the Western Wall and settlers who have moved into the east side of the city. “They carry Israeli flags and yellow ribbons to call for the return of the hostages from Gaza. I think that’s fine but we can’t wear anything that shows our identity. Why? Believe me, in the lives of Palestinians in Jerusalem, everything happens behind closed doors. Only then do we feel free to say what we think.”

Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed more than 62,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to estimates by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Strip. Currently, some 50 Israeli hostages are still in the hands of Hamas in Gaza, of whom an estimated 20 are still alive. “Life changed for us on October 7. From the outside it may seem that we are privileged, and we are, compared to those in Gaza, but the Palestinians of Jerusalem are very afraid. There is a progressive Judaization of the city. The harassment is increasing and everything is pushing us to leave,” says Ziad Hammouri, director of the Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER) in Jerusalem.

Hammouri cites the increase in the numbers of settlers in the east of the city, new municipal directives that will lead to a reduction in the number of Palestinian inhabitants — 39% out of a population of one million — and an increase in municipal taxes in the last two years. At the same time, the war has caused a collapse in tourism, on which hundreds of Palestinians who worked in shops, restaurants, and hostels depend. “There are many closed shops here in the Old City because the owners will not be able to pay the taxes and the premises could end up confiscated by Israel,” Hammouri adds.

Jerusalem’s changing identity

At an address on Al Wad Street, two armored doors and an access security code indicate that the place is inhabited by settlers. Any doubts are cleared up by the sight of an Israeli flag in one of the windows.

Israel occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967, annexed it years later, and considers the entire city its capital. Meanwhile, Palestinians aspire to seeing East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Control of the city is therefore a key element in the conflict. According to the Israeli NGO Peace Now, there are 15 settlements in East Jerusalem and 220,000 Israelis living in this part of the city, including scattered Israeli homes in Palestinian neighborhoods and in the Muslim part of the Old City. “It is no longer a silent occupation of Palestinian sites in Jerusalem, but a brazen one, which aims to change the identity of the city,” Imam says.

According to figures from the JCSER, 32,000 people live in the Old City and 29,000 of them are Palestinians. Several Israeli organizations such as Ateret Cohanim, Elad, Israel Land Fund and Nahalat Shim’on — all feared by Palestinians — have acquired properties in the Old City and in eastern neighborhoods such as Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, the Mount of Olives and other areas with a religious significance for Jews. In many cases, they use a law that allows Jews — but not Palestinians — to reclaim property that belonged to them before 1948, when the State of Israel was created and Jewish families had to leave their homes in the eastern part of the city. This process has been going on for years, but since October 7, it has accelerated, according to Hammouri.

These organizations evict the families living in these houses and install settlers, who are often very young and radical, and who then live surrounded by Palestinians in the midst of remarkable security measures. “Nobody stops them. Sometimes, when I see families evicted so close to my home while the international community turns a blind eye and the Palestinian Authority does not protect us either, I feel that I could be next,” says Imam, whose parents already lost a house in the west of the city after 1948. But still, he refuses to lose hope. “Despite everything, Jerusalem is not lost. When you walk through the Old City, you realize that Arabic permeates the streets, that we are and will continue to be. I am from here and I do not want to go to the West Bank, much less abroad,” he says.

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