Unlike these days, our childhood play extended beyond the walls of our homes. We played in the alleys, neighborhoods, and orchards filled with oranges, olives, and grapevines. Among the popular games were: Jumping rope, hopscotch, marbles, slingshots, “hide and seek”, “Aly Watwat”, and the seven stones. We also flew brightly colored kites that we creatively crafted by hand, letting them soar in the sky.
Playing outdoors was an absolute delight, bringing immeasurable joy and health benefits from all the running, jumping, and constant movement. We never grew weary or bored of it; only our parents’ call to return home for bedtime and an early rise the next day for school could interrupt our activities.
As children almost ten years old, one of our most cherished “games” was the quest to reach that distant palace atop the mountain. It wasn’t merely a pastime; it was an exhilarating adventure filled with challenges.
The palace stood as an abandoned, half-finished structure, yet scaling the mountain to reach it felt like a monumental achievement for us. We’d agree to meet at a set spot, then one of us would grasp the other’s hand, and we’d begin our gradual ascent until we conquered it. Among its columns, we’d wander, marveling at their grandeur and pondering why such a beautifully located palace had been left neglected. Then, one of us would sit beside the other near its edge, legs dangling freely in the air. From above, we contemplated everything around us as though we had touched down on Mars, feeling like we held the whole world in our hands in those fleeting moments.
The palace was serene, distanced from the bustling noise of the main street. Tranquility beckoned us into the realms of imagination painted by grandmothers and mothers — stories of queens’ palaces, warriors’ castles, the beauty of princesses, and the malevolence of ugly witches who haunted disobedient children. This mixture of tales evoked a fear that could suddenly urge us to flee the palace, as if someone lurked nearby with a stick, poised to strike us.
The construction of the palace started in Beit Hanina, a neighborhood north of Jerusalem, in the early 1960s. It was intended as a residence for the late Jordanian monarch, King Hussein bin Talal, during his visits to the West Bank from Jordan before it was occupied by Israel in 1967… the one I call the “Year of Thunder”.
The palace remained untouched until about a decade ago when there were reports at the time that the Islamic Endowments Authority of Jerusalem (Islamic Waqf) planned to start its reconstruction as over the past years, it has turned into a den for drug users and a gathering spot for alcohol addicts. However, the project never materialized due to political and legal hurdles imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities on the “Jerusalem Waqf”.
Information regarding the historical period from 1948 to 1967, when the West Bank, including Jerusalem, was under the administration of the Jordanian Hashemite family, is scarce. However, it is said that the late Jordanian monarch, King Hussein bin Talal, used to stay at a villa in the Beit Hanina neighborhood when he visited Jerusalem during that era. The villa belonged to the Jerusalemite “Al-Qutub” family.
Villa of the Al-Qutub family in Beit Hanina in the 1950s and 1960s
Photo from the archive of APO Documentaries,
https://www.facebook.com/apodocumentaries
Beit Hanina neighborhood, located approximately 15 kilometers north of Jerusalem, was considered one of the most upscale residential areas surrounding Jerusalem in the 1970s and 1980s. Some Jerusalemite families who had been displaced from West Jerusalem in 1948 owned houses there. Across from ours, that my parents rented from a landowner from Beit Hanina “Al-Tahta” (referring to the old or original town), stood Al-Qutub family’s villa. I remember how this old landowner was always in a bad temper. He rarely smiled. Every day, without fail, one could hear his grumblings and complaints to his life partner, the mother of his 8 children, who often disregarded his presence, engrossed in kneading dough for the morning’s bread.
The late Jordanian monarch, King Hussein bin Talal, meets with members of the American community of Jerusalemites at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem in the 1950s, with Abu Michael wearing his fez among the crowd. / Family Archive
Beit Hanina remained a quiet residential neighborhood. There was one grocery store at that time run by the “two brothers”, Atef and Khalid. In the early 1990’s, and particularly in 1993, the Oslo negotiations between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israelis started. The negotiations were supposed to lead to the complete withdrawal of Israeli occupation to the pre-June 4,1967 borders after five years. In parallel to that, a Palestinian Authority was supposed to be established in Ramallah city. The latter was described as the “temporary capital” of the future Palestinian State. During that time, the rent prices of apartments and houses in the Jerusalem area rose unprecedentedly. This surge drove many Jerusalemites to move from Jerusalem and its surroundings to the city of Ramallah, too. Many national and foreign institutions, non-governmental organizations and charitable associations moved to Ramallah.
By the end of 2000, after the outbreak of the Second Palestinian Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Israeli occupation started to put military checkpoints on the different routes and entrances leading to Jerusalem. A few years later, the construction of the “Separation Wall” started. It surrounded the City from all sides. With the completion of the building of the Wall, the Israeli occupation authorities continued to confiscate, intensively, the Jerusalem identity cards from the Jerusalemites. Fearing the loss of their residency rights in Jerusalem, many Jerusalemites who left Jerusalem for economic, and logistic reasons related to restrictions on movement, decided to return. They had no choice but to resettle within the areas which fall under the jurisdiction of the Israeli occupation municipal boarders. Only in such a way they can maintain their Jerusalem ID cards and preserve their right of residency in Jerusalem. Beit Hanina was one among other neighborhoods which fall within the Israeli municipal boarders.
Jordan’s King Hussein bin Talal inaugurates the St. George Hotel in Jerusalem in 1965
Since then, the facts on the ground in Beit Hanina changed completely. Anyone who knew this neighborhood and lived there in the 1970s and 1980s would hardly believe today that this is the same neighborhood one knew 30 years ago. Over the past three decades, Beit Hanina has transformed into a marginalized, narrow service road. It is surrounded on both sides by dozens of shops, commercial stores, construction workshops, and adjacent residential towers, lined with a vast number of cars, buses, and trucks.
A resident of the neighborhood whom I knew for decades sarcastically told me a couple of years ago that this road is described now as the “Champs-Élysées” of Paris.
“The Champs-Elysées”
Published on February 11, 2021
