The sit-ins organized by Palestinians in July last year to protest installing electronic gates at Al-Aqsa Mosque which was organized at Bab Hitta neighborhood in Occupied Jerusalem was a pretext for the Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) to target the neighborhood or the “protection fence” of Al-Aqsa by intensifying its raids against it.
The neighborhood of Bab Hitta is one of the neighborhoods of the Islamic Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem which has historical landmarks that go back to the Ayyubid era. It is also a home for Al-Salahyia school established by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi as a scientific complex from which many scholars graduated. The Bab Hitta Gate is one of the oldest gates of Al-Aqsa and it located at its northern wall between Al-Asbat and Faisal Gates.
“The economic situation in Bab Hitta is getting worse” said Abu Yazan Al-Dweik who runs a shop there. “The campaign launched by the occupation forces against the neighborhood will not end especially after US President Donald Trump’s decision to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem recognizing it as Israel’s capital.”
He points out to the PIC reporter that the occupation’s campaign aims at forcing the Palestinian inhabitant of the Holy City out calling on the responsible authorities and bodies to pay attention to the situation of Palestinian merchants. He warned that the laws and procedures of the IOA have exhausted merchants and forced some of them to close their shops.
Commercial recession
Abu Ali Al-Tamimi an old barber in Bab Hitta used to work until the evening hours but today he closes his shop in the afternoon because commercial life stops by then. He remembers the past by saying: “The neighborhood used to be a home for some famous figures in the city and it was full of shoppers and visitors. Today we see closed shops and a deserted neighborhood.”
He complains about the commercial recession in the neighborhood of Bab Hitta describing it as unbearable. He explained that sometimes he opens his shop without having a single customer and the number of customers usually does not exceed one or two.
Al-Tamimi recounts to the PIC reporter several reasons for the setback of the commercial movement in Bab Hitta. The most prominent reason is the encirclement of Jerusalem by the Apartheid Wall the occupation forces stationed at the gates of Jerusalem the arrest of young people and checking their personal IDs and the high taxes imposed on the neighborhood by the IOA especially after the rejection of electronic gates installed by the Israeli occupation at Al-Aqsa. When we hear the tax authority is around we close our shops and leave the area.”
Steadfastness
“We will not leave the neighborhood and we will remain steadfast until the last day of our lives” says Abu Hassan Al-Baghdadi 82 a restaurant owner for 52 years in response to targeting the neighborhood by the occupation forces in an attempt to push people out of the area by imposing high taxes demanding the rehabilitation of shops and requiring obtaining new licenses under impossible conditions.
Despite the limited number of Jerusalem’s population during the Jordanian rule of the city (from 1948-1967) Abu Hassan describes this period as the most beautiful in the history of the Holy City. He adds to the PIC reporter “It is true that trade was weak but we were satisfied. We used to pay two Jordanian Dinars a year as a tax but today we pay the Israeli Arnona tax worth 8500 NIS a year (nearly 1350 USD) let alone rent electricity and water.”
The neighborhood of Bab Hitta contains 40 shops of which only six are open and the rest prefer to close down to avoid the Israeli tax authority.
