Qatamon

Summary

Jerusalem neighborhood — translated from Greek to mean “under the monastery” — of middle- and upper-class Palestinian homes emptied in 1948, whose history Zochrot’s West Jerusalem tour narrates through Khalil Sakakini’s journals and his daughter Hala’s memoir in Chapter 4 of Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine (Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, PDF p.140-144).

After the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution to partition Palestine in 1947, and although the resolution named Jerusalem a separate international zone, Zionist militias began to target both Palestinian civilians and armed members of neighborhoods like Qatamon (PDF p.140).
On January 5, 1948, the Haganah blew up the Semiramis hotel, a family establishment in Qatamon, claiming, based on mistaken intelligence reports, that the hotel was the headquarters of the Qatamon guard; eighteen people died, dozens were wounded, and many went into shock (PDF p.140-141).
The next day many families left Qatamon, but the Sakakini family stayed to defend their home; after the San Simon battle, when the Zionists conquered the San Simon Greek Orthodox Monastery, they finally fled — the last Palestinian family in Qatamon, on April 30, 1948 (PDF p.141-142).
Spaces like Qatamon and Talbiya are not the villages most often privileged in retellings of 1948 but the middle- and upper-class homes and urban centers; Kelly cautions that itineraries centered on such spaces can flatten Palestinian class differences, privileging a narrative of loss that pivots on the loss of mansions (PDF p.142, 144).

tags
aliases