Beit Hanina

Israel's weapon of house demolitions

Jill Shaw Beit Hanina, West Bank 25 August 2008



The four-story building in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood a few miles north of East Jerusalem, was clearly home to wealth. As our carload of internationals pulled up the small street leading to Abu Majed Eisha’s house at around midnight I noticed several BMWs parked along the way. From what I had learned during my brief time in the West Bank, Palestine, I knew already that this was not going to be an ordinary house demolition. Jill Shaw writes from Beit Hanina. 

Blocking Out the Sun

Mike Odetalla Beit Hanina, Palestine 14 February 2005



My Palestinian mother has a favorite expression that she likes to use. Whenever she wants the curtains pulled back, a window or door opened to the outside world, or just wants to get out of the house, to be outdoors, she would always say that she wants to ashoof wijih rabie (roughly translated: “to see the face of my God”). Last summer, while my family and I were in Palestine, we got to see and experience, first hand, the magnificence of God’s face and the ugly face of occupation and oppression, the Apartheid Wall that is being built by Israel. Mike Odetalla writes from Beit Hanina. 

Israeli checkpoints result in death of two Palestinian babies

Patricia Smith Beit Hanina 18 December 2002

Adla Abdel Jaber As-Sayyefi, 37 years old, went into labour at around 3am on the morning of December 10th. Her husband rushed to his parent’s house concerned because Adla was due to go hospital to have an operation as it was going to be a breech birth, but she went into labour too early. Patricia Smith tells the story. 

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