How control and arbitrariness shape the lives of Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem
Since 1967, East Jerusalem has been under Israeli control. This annexation is not internationally recognized, but in practice it means that the Palestinian population lives with restricted rights and under constant surveillance. This shapes not only everyday life, but also the city’s cultural scene. Cultural institutions and meeting places that give space to Palestinian perspectives repeatedly come under surveillance by the Israeli authorities. A photography exhibition by Palestinian youth thus becomes the starting point for a reportage on a city where culture can never be separated from politics – and where the question of space extends far beyond exhibition halls.
Stuffed pastries and fragrant mini pizzas, small chocolate croissants and yeast breads filled with wild herbs: the buffet is set and fills the old stone walls with aroma. The event is about to begin. Here, in what was once a tile factory in Jerusalem’s Old City, the small art space Al-Mamal is now dedicated to contemporary Palestinian art. On this evening, ten young Palestinians from the West Bank are presenting their photographs to the audience.
Yet something about this evening feels strange. The pictures are on the walls, the buffet is ready, the visitors have arrived – but the artists themselves are missing. They live no more than 65 kilometers away in the West Bank, but are not allowed to travel to Jerusalem because Israel has denied them entry permits. Their images are here today – but those who created them must follow from home, via Zoom, as their own works are admired and applauded in Jerusalem.
For a year, ten young Palestinians, most of them teenagers, learned from experienced photographers how to handle a camera, compose an image, and express themselves visually. The project was coordinated and funded by Pro Peace. It was an intense and exciting year for everyone involved, says Rihan, the workshop facilitator. Through photography, the young Palestinians learned to “find a peaceful form of expression for their living conditions.”
These living conditions can seem abstract and almost unimaginable from a European perspective: the daily queues at Israeli army checkpoints in the West Bank, the humiliating body searches that are part of everyday life. Likewise, military operations using live ammunition, right in the middle of Palestinian city centers. Again and again, there are demonstrations that are dispersed with tear gas – sometimes by the Palestinian police, mostly by the Israeli military.
“Art is a language that all people understand”
Anyone looking for all of this in the photographs by the young Palestinians has to search for it. At first glance, the images produced in the workshops seem harmless. Bright yellow flowers glow in close-up. An old door here, a rooster there in all its shaggy, colorful splendor. These scenes could just as well have been photographed in the countryside of Brandenburg.
Only on closer inspection does the political message embedded in the images reveal itself. Between the camera lens and the rooster, a wire fence cuts across the frame. And the old door points back to an era when there was no state here yet – only a region called Palestine. “There is a silence inside me that no one sees, and a secret I do not explain. In photography, it becomes visible,” says Ali Ahmad, a 16-year-old whose work features prominently in the exhibition. The photograph becomes a release valve for so much that cannot be spoken.
“I’m really impressed by how powerful these images are,” says Shireen Mufdi, co-director of the Al-Mamal Foundation for Contemporary Art, which runs the art space in Jerusalem. “They show us as ordinary people.”
I’m really impressed by how powerful these images are. They show us as ordinary people.
By “us,” Mufdi means Palestinians. “We are usually shown only in connection with politics,” the curator says. What is missing from the media discourse are everyday realities: “Children running around. Adults sitting together. A love of nature and cultural heritage.” All the things that connect people. Exhibitions like this one are meant to counterbalance that distortion. “Art is a language that all people understand, because it speaks directly to the soul,” Mufdi says. Where words reach their limits, visual language builds bridges to a world that would otherwise remain closed.
East Jerusalem: Culture on Probation
But for how much longer? All art spaces in East Jerusalem fear that sooner or later they, too, will become targets of repression. The war in Gaza has triggered a new wave of repression that is now reaching East Jerusalem as well, says Shireen Mufdi. “Everyone is cautious and watches what they say. Everyone is afraid.”
One person who no longer wants to be cautious is Mahmud Muna. Muna’s family has been running three bookstores in East Jerusalem for more than forty years. The repression Mufdi warns about is something Muna has already experienced. A year ago, he had to watch as several Israeli police officers stormed his bookstores, tore books from the shelves, and arrested him and his nephew Ahmed.
“They declared every book cover with the word ‘Palestine’ on it illegal,” Muna recounts, still shaking his head in disbelief. Other titles that struck the officers as suspicious were also taken. Several hundred books were confiscated – among them works by international figures such as the street artist Banksy. After 48 hours, Mahmud and Ahmed Muna were released and placed under house arrest for five days. They were then freed, but were not allowed to enter their bookshops for a further twenty days.
To this day, they do not know what they were actually accused of. While the police claimed the case involved incitement, the public prosecutor’s office knew nothing about it. Charges were never filed. Was it all simply harassment?
That depends on whom you ask. Some saw the raid on the bookstores as a deliberate act of intimidation. The three bookstores run by the Muna family – above all the Educational Bookshop not far from Damascus Gate – have established themselves as spaces for progressive discourse. European diplomats meet members of progressive Palestinian circles here, drink an espresso in the adjoining café, and draw inspiration for their conversations from the latest publications on the Middle East conflict.
Mahmud Muna himself does not believe the police operation was part of a long-planned offensive against progressive spaces in East Jerusalem. “Declaring books to be criminal – that’s just sheer stupidity,” says the man in his forties. He sees the raid as the expression of a far more dangerous trend: “The police officers feel they can simply walk into any bookstore without even asking whether it’s legal or not.” This kind of arbitrariness, he says, is “one of the central elements of fascism.” And the first to feel the effects of this arbitrariness are Palestinians.
What Muna describes, however, does not end at the door of his bookshop. In this case, it affects bookshelves; elsewhere, exhibition halls or stages. But behind it lies the same question: Who is allowed to be visible and present in this city — and who is not? In East Jerusalem, it is not only about what may be said or shown, but about who gets to keep space and who loses it. And that loss is not confined to cultural venues.
One year ago, the Israeli millitary raided Mahmud Muna's book stores.
Between Souvenir Stalls and Rubble
Since the ceasefire in Gaza came into effect, tourists have begun returning to Jerusalem. Some of them also find their way into one of the Muna family’s bookstores. What they encounter there is a well-curated selection of literature and non-fiction, as well as cookbooks and magazines. Nothing hints at the repression that has taken place in this very spot. In Jerusalem’s Old City, too, tourists stroll past the colorful, fragrant stalls of the souk, unaware of what is happening out of sight: that the living space of the Palestinians who reside here is steadily shrinking.
Yet just a few hundred meters from the Western Wall, this displacement becomes plainly visible. Here stands the house of Fakhri Abudiab – or what remains of it. The building in which the 64-year-old grew up and raised his four children is now nothing but a mound of rubble. Fakhri and his wife Amina lived here with two of their sons and their families. One grandchild was just a week old when the bulldozers came and demolished the house.
The Abudiab family lives in Silwan, a densely populated Palestinian neighborhood located directly below the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. An archaeological theme park is planned here, where tourists are to walk along the paths of the Jewish roots of present-day Jerusalem – at the site where the biblical King David is said to have lived. Because the houses of the Abudiab family and their neighbors stand in the way of these plans, they are to be demolished. The residents receive no compensation for this – on the contrary: Fakhri is required to pay for the demolition of his own home. More than 43,000 shekels (around 11,000 euros) must be paid in monthly installments.
City authorities cite legal reasons for this: part of the Abudiab house was built without a construction permit. Abudiab does not deny this. In the 1980s, his family tried to obtain a permit for an extension to the house but repeatedly ran into dead ends.
This, says Amy Cohen of the Israeli non-governmental organization Ir Amim, is systemic. “The Palestinians who live here never really had a chance to obtain permits,” she explains. For a long time, no one seemed to mind. Now that the theme park is meant to become a new tourist attraction, that is changing. “The houses are demolished, and the lack of permits serves as a pretext,” Cohen says.
The house where they raised their children is now a pile of rubble.
Because official urban planning in Jerusalem allows for expansion only in Jewish neighborhoods, not in Palestinian ones, Palestinians in the city are forced to densify their neighborhoods upward not outward – by adding floors or extensions for which they cannot obtain permits. This is what happened in Abudiab’s neighborhood in Silwan. Around 1,500 residents there now fear that their homes, too, could be demolished.
“If bulldozers were to raze an entire neighborhood to the ground within a matter of days, we could expect a huge outcry worldwide,” explains the regional director of Pro Peace in Israel and Palestine. “But because it is happening gradually and not overnight, people don’t see it.” Although there are dedicated local organisations offering guided tours to highlight this incremental form of land appropriation, more needs to be done to make visible the divided reality in which Palestinians in Jerusalem live.
The Images Have the Last Word
Back in the small exhibition space in East Jerusalem, the young Palestinian amateur photographers are already connected via video call. They are excited to present their work to the public and talk about their images. One of them, however – 16-year-old Ali – is muted. He is stuck at one of the many Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and knows that what he would like to say could lead to his arrest. So, he says nothing at all. It is his photographs that must speak for him.
Maria Sterkl is a freelance journalist who reports from Israel and Palestine for publications including the Frankfurter Rundschau. Born in Austria, she lives and works in Jerusalem and Haifa. This article was written in December 2025.
Postscript (March 2026)
Since this report was written in December 2025, the situation for Palestinian cultural spaces in East Jerusalem has further deteriorated. Security forces carried out raids at two additional cultural events. At the Yabous Theatre, a screening of the film “Palestine 36” — which had previously been shown widely in Europe and the West Bank — was interrupted. A cultural event at the National Theatre was also shut down by security forces.
