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As the devastating destruction and loss of life in Gaza persists, the 2024-2025 school year brings mounting challenges for Palestinian educators and students in East Jerusalem. Over the past year, the Israeli Knesset has advanced legislation that threatens to further erode East Jerusalem’s already fragile education system—including a bill to…

The year 2023 concluded at the peak of warfare and amid deep crisis in both Israeli and Palestinian societies. The October 7 massacre; 136 Israeli hostages; a bloody war with tens of thousands killed and injured; tremendous destruction in Gaza; hundreds of thousands of people displaced; an acute economic crisis…

28 February 2022 The following alert has been jointly issued by Ir Amim and Bimkom. On Tuesday, March 1, the Jerusalem District Planning Committee is scheduled to discuss the dormant Mount Scopus Slopes National Park plan (TPS 11092a) initiated by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) with the…

​ Click Here to Read the Full Report Summary Following the conclusion of the fourth Israeli election in two years in March 2021, a government was formed through merging parties from across the political spectrum with – for the first time – an Arab party, Ra’am: The United…

19 January 2022 Today (19 January), the Israeli authorities, escorted by the police and paramilitary forces, forcibly evicted overnight the Salahiya family, consisting of 12 individuals, including five children, from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah. The authorities proceeded to raze their homes and all remaining structures on their property. Demolitions…

05 January 2022 This week, one of the households of the Salhia family in Sheikh Jarrah received an eviction order from the Enforcement and Collection Agency, which can be carried out at any time between January 10-25, 2022. The household, consisting of seven individuals, including five children, is therefore at imminent…

25 March 2021 Some 70 homes in the Al Bustan area of Silwan are under acute threat of demolition, placing over 1000 individuals of one community at risk of mass displacement. In late February, the Jerusalem Municipality filed an objection to the Local Affairs Court against the residents’ request to…

September 7, 2020 On Wednesday September 9th, the Jerusalem Local Committee is scheduled to approve expropriation of areas in Silwan in preparation for the construction of the Cable Car, which is designed to connect West Jerusalem and various settler projects in Silwan. Such land expropriation is under the authority of…

“Rights groups argue that Palestinians seeking to build their homes legally face a discriminatory system which leaves them without any realistic option except illegal construction.According to Ir Amim, over 21,000 housing units were advanced in detailed outline plans in Jerusalem in 2019, but less than 8 percent were in Palestinian…

July 21, 2020 Plan for Yeshiva at Sheikh Jarrah not Approved by District Committee Yesterday the District Committee discussed the the plan for a Yeshiva (religious educational institution) and accompanying dormitory in Sheikh Jarrah.Yesterday’s discussion was intended to be the final one for deciding on the plan’s…

“These are decades-old homes,” said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher for the Ir Amim organization, which has been helping Al-Walaja residents for years. “Generation after generation has lived in them, cultivated gardens around them and worked magnificent terraces of olive groves. Al-Walaja residents’ connection to their land and their heritage was…

According to Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher for the left-wing Ir Amim organization, “Leon is a doer, he’s not a man of big words or vision.” Tatarsky has been following for years the relationship between Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the municipality. “When it comes to the coronavirus, Leon is doing what needs…

February 18, 2020 . On February 9, the planning department within the Jerusalem municipality opened a file for a new detailed outline plan (TPS 764936) to create a large new neighborhood/settlement in the area of the decommissioned Atarot airport. The new Atarot neighborhood/settlement (shaded area on map below) would…

“In a new report, Ir Amim said 104 housing units were demolished in 2019, compared() to 72 units in 2018. The 44% spike also ends what had been a decline in demolitions between 2016 and 2018.Aviv Tatarsky, the Ir Amim researcher who wrote the report released Wednesday, said the group…

December 17,2019 This morning municipality crews accompanied by  border police forces demolished the home of the Khalil family from the neighborhood Issawiya. Their home was demolished for being built without a permit. The demolition adds on to the ongoing police raids of Issawiya which have been continuing daily…

The map of Greater Jerusalem 2019 delineates the Green Line; the Jerusalem municipal boundary; the borders of historic Jordanian Jerusalem; and the route of the Separation Barrier and how it defines the Greater Jerusalem area. Also noted are distinctions between Israeli and Palestinian neighborhoods as well as ongoing and future…

Oren Haber: ​“Indeed, it is a pitiless municipal leadership that would displace an elderly woman and then deny her even a makeshift home. It is a heartless system that subjects the Palestinians of East Jerusalem to ongoing house demolitions on grounds of unlicensed construction, while denying them the option to build legally.” 

Ir Amim's Aviv Tatarsky on the summoning of Palestinian farmers from Walajeh for questioning: “Now, instead of supporting the farmers who created and are preserving this special natural site, parks authority inspectors are harassing them.”

The high rate of demolitions in East Jerusalem continued in 2017, totaling 86 residential units and 87 non-residential units. Neighborhoods hit particularly hard by demolitions included Issawiya, Beit Hanina, Jabal Mukaber and Silwan.

In recent years, the school system in East Jerusalem has been coping with a continued shortage of classrooms as well as the highest dropout rates recorded in data collected by Israel; while at the same time confronting the considerable stress being exerted, mainly by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs, to impose the Israeli curriculum on the Palestinian national community in the city. The combination of neglected infrastructure and elaborate political attempts to influence content has left the school system in East Jerusalem in dire straits. Along with mounting pressure from the Israeli government, the disparities reviewed in this report have serious ramifications for tens of thousands of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem.