This story was on NPR this morning, good. Residents of occupied Sheikh Jarrah woke up to the sound of the bulldozers. My account comes from a source who has seen the UN version of events:
Shepherd’s Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem is currently being demolished. The demolition started this morning and is ongoing. Shepherd’s Hotel is being demolished in order to facilitate the construction of a residential Jewish settlement. These demolition and settlement construction plans date to the 1984. In July 2009, the Israeli planning authorities approved the construction license. It allows for the demolition of the existing building in favor of two residential buildings, with 30 housing units and associated amenities at the first stage and 90 housing units at a later stage.
The property called Shepherd’s Hotel was built in the 1930’s by Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, as his family home outside of the Old City of Jerusalem. The British exiled him in 1937, and the British used it as a military outpost. During Jordanian rule, from 1948 through 1967, the Mufti’s proxy took control of the property and rented it to hoteliers. Thus the home became known as the Shepherd’s Hotel. In 1967, the Hotel, along with the rest of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood where it’s located, fell under Israeli occupation. They confiscated the property and transferred it to the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property who in turn transferred it to the Israeli Development Authority from where it subsequently passed, on 5 November 1985, to “C & M Properties.”
