JERUSALEM: Days after capturing Jerusalem’s Old City in a 1967 war, Israel razed the Moroccan Quarter, a ramshackle neighborhood of Palestinian homes in front of the Western Wall, aiming to create an open space for Jews to pray at one of their holiest sites.
The 50th anniversary of that conflict has rekindled memories of the event, when the flattened district’s 650 Palestinians residents, mostly poor migrants, were urged to move to Shuafat, a refugee camp, or fled further, to camps in Lebanon and Jordan.
But some stayed and a half-century later are determined to retain their presence in the Old City.
“Israel brought buses to Damascus Gate and said people can take free rides if they wanted to quit Jerusalem,” recalls Mohammad Assawaf, now 90, who was running a bakery in the neighborhood when the Six-Day War broke out on June 5, 1967.
“All those who left regretted it.”
Assawaf’s bakery was in the Jewish Quarter, which had been cleared of its Jewish residents by Jordanian forces when they seized the Old City and the rest of East Jerusalem in 1948, during the war that followed Israel’s creation.
Israel’s sweeping victory nearly two decades later allowed Jews back into the Old City for the first time, and fueled the desire to reclaim all of the Jewish Quarter, including the area where the razed Arab neighborhood had taken root over the centuries.
Assawaf, a father of 15 children, was forced to leave his house, which was one of those bulldozed on June 10 and 11 to make space for the marbled Western Wall plaza. But he refused to give up his nearby bakery, despite large offers of cash from Israel.
“I stayed in the bakery and continued to work there. They offered me 250,000 Jordanian dinars, but I refused,” he said, mentioning a sum that would have been vast at the time.
Eventually Assawaf gave up the bakery, following a court battle in the 1980s, but he is still living in the Jewish Quarter, one of the few Arab residents to do so, and is determined to stay put in the place where he was born.
“Jerusalem as a place did not change, but the people changed,” he said, referring to the return of Jews to the neighborhood. “Now there is occupation, life before was easier.”
In Shuafat, a camp of high-rise buildings rife with poverty and unemployment, there are regrets among Palestinians who took the decision to leave the Old City. Shuafat is only around eight km (five miles) to the north, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but it feels a world away.
Mohammad Ali, 77, grew up in the Jewish Quarter when it was empty of Jewish residents. But in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war, he decided to leave, thinking life would improve.
“I left my heart and my life in the Old City,” he said.
Mohammad Abu Znaid was 10 years old when the 1967 war erupted. When Israeli troops seized the Old City, he and his family were forced to flee the Jewish Quarter, he said. They walked barefoot to Shuafat, a journey he regrets.
“We are today living in a refugee camp, you can say fatherless and motherless,” he said, using a term to suggest that there is no support or sense of belonging.
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In Jerusalem’s Old City, Palestinians recall 1967 uprooting
In Jerusalem’s Old City, Palestinians recall 1967 uprooting
Hamas to elect first leader since Sinwar killed by Israel
- Role left vacant since Israel killed Yahya Sinwar in 2024
- Khalil Al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal are seen as frontrunners
CAIRO: Hamas is expected to elect a new leader this month, two sources in the group told Reuters, filling the role left vacant since Israel killed Yahya Sinwar in 2024 despite concerns that a successor could suffer the same fate.
Khalil Al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal are seen as frontrunners for the helm at a vital moment for the militant Islamist group, battered by two years of war ignited by its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and facing international demands to disarm.
Both men reside in Qatar and sit on a five-man council that has run Hamas since Israel killed Sinwar, a mastermind of the October 7 attack. His predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated by Israel while on a visit to Iran in 2024.
The election process has already begun, the sources said. The leader is chosen in a secret ballot by Hamas’ Shoura Council, a 50-member body that includes Hamas members in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and exile.
A Hamas spokesperson declined to comment.
Tough challenges
The sources said a deputy leader will also be elected to replace Saleh Al-Arouri, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon in 2024.
Sources close to Hamas said it was determined to conclude the vote, though some preferred an extension of collective leadership.
Hamas watchers regard Meshaal as part of a pragmatic wing with good ties to Sunni Muslim countries, and Hayya, the group’s lead negotiator, as part of a camp that deepened its relations with Iran.
Hamas faces some of the toughest challenges since it was founded in 1987. While fighting has largely abated in Gaza since the US-brokered ceasefire in October, Israel still holds almost half the coastal enclave, attacks continue, and conditions for Gaza’s 2 million people remain dire.
Hamas has also drawn criticism within Gaza because of the heavy toll inflicted by the war, with much of the enclave reduced to ruins and more than 71,000 people killed, according to Gaza health authorities.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251 others in the October 7 cross-border assault on Israel.
US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan for Gaza demands Hamas disarm and foresees the enclave being run by a technocratic Palestinian administration overseen by an international body called the Board of Peace.
Targeted by Israel
Hamas has so far refused to disarm, saying the question of armed resistance is a matter for wider debate among Palestinian factions and that it would be ready to surrender its weapons to a future Palestinian state, an outcome Israel has ruled out.
Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Western powers including the United States.
Born in Gaza, Hayya was among Hamas leaders targeted by an Israeli airstrike on Qatar in September.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later expressed regret to the emir of Qatar — a US ally — in a three-way call with Trump and affirmed Israel would not conduct such an attack again in the future, the White House said at the time.
Meshaal previously led Hamas for almost two decades. Israeli agents tried to assassinate him in Jordan in 1997 by injecting him with poison.
His relations with Iran were strained in 2012 when he distanced Hamas from Tehran’s Syrian ally, the now-ousted President Bashar Assad, early in the Arab Spring uprisings.
Hamas was founded as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and is the main rival to the Palestinians’ Fatah national movement led by 90-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas’ founding charter called for the destruction of Israel, although its leaders have at times offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.
Israel regards this approach as a ruse.
Analyst Reham Owda said there were limited differences between Hayya and Meshaal over the conflict with Israel but believed Meshaal had better chances as he could “market (Hamas) internationally and help rebuild its capabilities.”
Khalil Al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal are seen as frontrunners for the helm at a vital moment for the militant Islamist group, battered by two years of war ignited by its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and facing international demands to disarm.
Both men reside in Qatar and sit on a five-man council that has run Hamas since Israel killed Sinwar, a mastermind of the October 7 attack. His predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated by Israel while on a visit to Iran in 2024.
The election process has already begun, the sources said. The leader is chosen in a secret ballot by Hamas’ Shoura Council, a 50-member body that includes Hamas members in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and exile.
A Hamas spokesperson declined to comment.
Tough challenges
The sources said a deputy leader will also be elected to replace Saleh Al-Arouri, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon in 2024.
Sources close to Hamas said it was determined to conclude the vote, though some preferred an extension of collective leadership.
Hamas watchers regard Meshaal as part of a pragmatic wing with good ties to Sunni Muslim countries, and Hayya, the group’s lead negotiator, as part of a camp that deepened its relations with Iran.
Hamas faces some of the toughest challenges since it was founded in 1987. While fighting has largely abated in Gaza since the US-brokered ceasefire in October, Israel still holds almost half the coastal enclave, attacks continue, and conditions for Gaza’s 2 million people remain dire.
Hamas has also drawn criticism within Gaza because of the heavy toll inflicted by the war, with much of the enclave reduced to ruins and more than 71,000 people killed, according to Gaza health authorities.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251 others in the October 7 cross-border assault on Israel.
US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan for Gaza demands Hamas disarm and foresees the enclave being run by a technocratic Palestinian administration overseen by an international body called the Board of Peace.
Targeted by Israel
Hamas has so far refused to disarm, saying the question of armed resistance is a matter for wider debate among Palestinian factions and that it would be ready to surrender its weapons to a future Palestinian state, an outcome Israel has ruled out.
Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Western powers including the United States.
Born in Gaza, Hayya was among Hamas leaders targeted by an Israeli airstrike on Qatar in September.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later expressed regret to the emir of Qatar — a US ally — in a three-way call with Trump and affirmed Israel would not conduct such an attack again in the future, the White House said at the time.
Meshaal previously led Hamas for almost two decades. Israeli agents tried to assassinate him in Jordan in 1997 by injecting him with poison.
His relations with Iran were strained in 2012 when he distanced Hamas from Tehran’s Syrian ally, the now-ousted President Bashar Assad, early in the Arab Spring uprisings.
Hamas was founded as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and is the main rival to the Palestinians’ Fatah national movement led by 90-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas’ founding charter called for the destruction of Israel, although its leaders have at times offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.
Israel regards this approach as a ruse.
Analyst Reham Owda said there were limited differences between Hayya and Meshaal over the conflict with Israel but believed Meshaal had better chances as he could “market (Hamas) internationally and help rebuild its capabilities.”
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