| Shepherd Hotel | |
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| General information | |
| Coordinates | 31°47′36″N35°14′02″E / 31.7933°N 35.2339°E |
The Shepherd Hotel was a hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
| Shepherd Hotel | |
|---|---|
| | |
| | |
| General information | |
| Coordinates | 31°47′36″N35°14′02″E / 31.7933°N 35.2339°E |
The Shepherd Hotel was a hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
The building was built in the 1930s by Baruch Katinka, a Jewish engineer and partner in the Albina Katinka Dunia construction company. It was commissioned as a home for the Muslim Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who never lived there. [1] The mufti transferred the right to live there to his personal secretary, George Antonius and his wife Katy, who were local celebrities and hosted parties and social gatherings there. [2] After Antonius died in 1942, his widow continued to reside in the house and became involved romantically with the commander of the British forces in Palestine, Evelyn Barker. [1]
In early 1947, Katy Antonius left the house after a nearby building was blown up by the Irgun, which claimed it tried to warn her but her telephone was constantly busy. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the building was taken over by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and reopened as a hotel for pilgrims. A new wing was added which obscured the original architecture. [1]
Following the Six-Day War, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the hotel was declared "absentee property" (AP) and became the property of the Government of Israel under the "Absentee Property Law". It was used by the Ministry of Justice and as a district courthouse. [3]
The land use of the building is part of Plan 2591 approved in 1982 by the Jerusalem District Committee of the Interior Ministry, and is designated for residential use.
The Custodian of Arab Property sold the building and surrounding land in 1985 to Irving Moskowitz, a Jewish-American businessman, supporter of Israeli settlers activities in East Jerusalem, who renamed it the "Sheffer Hotel." [1] At the beginning of the first Intifada in 1987, the Border Police leased the building and stayed there for about 15 years before moving to their new building alongside Highway One.
Following the zoning of Plan 2591, a request was made on November 6, 2008 to permit construction by C and M Properties Ltd. of two new residential buildings, which include 20 apartments, underground parking, flat roofs, and two floors above the parking level.
In March 2009, the project appeared on the agenda of the licensing committee of the Jerusalem Municipality but was removed later. But on July 2, 2009, at the height of U.S. efforts to press Israel to adopt a settlement freeze in order to get the peace process going, the Local Planning Committee of the Jerusalem Municipality approved the request, which included the destruction of the existing buildings on the property, except for the historic structure designated for preservation. The U.S. government voiced its displeasure over the project to Israel's Washington ambassador in 2009 after the plan received the green light from the Municipality, a direct challenge to President Barack Obama's effort to launch negotiations toward Israeli–Palestinian and Israeli–Arab peace.
Construction was delayed for six months due to a dispute with a son of Faisal al-Husseini, a former Palestinian Authority minister for Jerusalem affairs, who claimed that the family owned part of the parking lot. The court rejected this claim. Demolition began on January 9, 2011. [4]
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in February 2012 that the Husseini family could not claim ownership of the landmark because too much time had passed since Israeli authorities had transferred the property to private developers. [5]
The new building is the first settlement construction in Sheikh Jarrah since 1967.
Mohammed Amin al-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine. Al-Husseini was the scion of the al-Husayni family of Jerusalemite Arab nobles, who trace their origins to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.
Faisal Abdel Qader Al-Husseini was a Palestinian politician.
Fawzi al-Qawuqji was a Lebanese-born Arab nationalist military figure in the interwar period. He served briefly in Palestine in 1936 fighting the British Mandatory suppression of the Palestinian Revolt. A political decision by the British enabled him to flee the country in 1937. He was a colonel in the Nazi Wehrmacht during World War II, and served as the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) field commander during the 1948 Palestine War.
Husayni is the name of a prominent Palestinian Arab clan formerly based in Jerusalem, which claims descent from Husayn ibn Ali.
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Sheikh Jarrah is a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, two kilometres north of the Old City, on the road to Mount Scopus. It received its name from the 13th-century tomb of Hussam al-Din al-Jarrahi, a physician of Saladin, located within its vicinity. The modern neighborhood was founded in 1865 and gradually became a residential center of Jerusalem's Muslim elite, particularly the al-Husayni family. After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, it became under Jordanian-held East Jerusalem, bordering the no-man's land area with Israeli-held West Jerusalem until Israel occupied the neighborhood in the 1967 Six-Day War. Most of its present Palestinian population is said to come from refugees expelled from Jerusalem's Talbiya neighbourhood in 1948.
Irving Moskowitz was an American physician, businessman, and activist. His activism, in part, sought to create a Jewish majority in Palestinian Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem by purchasing land.
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