‘Mawtini, Mawtini…’ ‘My homeland, my homeland / Glory and beauty, sublimity and splendour / Are in your hills, are in your hills’
I first visited the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem in 2009 when I was working as a human rights observer with EAPPI (the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel).
We visited the area because Palestinian residents had been evicted from their homes and Israeli settlers had moved in.
Israeli settlers,…