In Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, longtime Palestinian residents are challenging expulsions by Israeli settlers in court and bearing a violent response, fearing the repeat of history

Sheikh Jarrah is “a microcosm of the Nakba,” Diana Buttu, the director of the IMEU told Insider. “Because it’s a result of the Nakba.”

Samira Dajani holds a photo of her father, Fouad Moussa Dajani and his sons, taken in the same place in the courtyard of their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem, on May 9, 2021. Photo: Maya Alleruzzo/AP

By Azmi Haroun

Rasha Budeiri and her mother often reminisce about memories that span generations of their family’s history in Sheikh Jarrah, a close-knit Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Her mother, Samira Dajani, remembers planting trees with her grandfather in the garden, and Rasha misses the summertime reunions with her cousins from across the diaspora, where they would play, fight, laugh and clamor for a spot on the swing. Budeiri distinctly remembers her grandmother’s eyes, and the way they would light up at the sight of her grandchildren, a unified family, gathered in her garden.

The swing is still there, but like many other Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, and scattered throughout this area, the fate of their family and land is uncertain.

A fraught history, and a chaotic present