The Salem family is one of 17 families facing eviction orders in Sheikh Jarrah. In 1951 the family was forcibly displaced from their original home in the village of Qalunya on the outskirts of West Jerusalem during the ongoing Nakba and relocated to Sheikh Jarrah under a protected tenancy agreement with the Jordanian government. When the Israeli State illegally occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, the Salem’s family home was transferred into the jurisdiction of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. In 1970 Israel enacted a discriminatory law that allows Israeli Jews to reclaim formerly Jewish-owned assets prior to 1948 in East Jerusalem though no parallel legal mechanism exists for Palestinians to reclaim their properties they owned pre-1948 on the Israeli side of the Green Line. And while Jews from all over the world are granted ‘the right to return,’ Palestinians are not granted that same right though 1.5 million of them remain as refugees as a result of the Nakba. You can read more about the Salem family’s case here.
Following an eviction order handed to the Salem family by the Jerusalem Municipality in December 2021, the family expressed interest to create a mural outside of their home as a form of resistance. Together with the family and Jewish activists from the groups Free Jerusalem and All That’s Left, Loo and her friend / colleague Manar Shreiteh implemented a community mural co-envisioned and co-created by all partners. This mural is representative of Palestinian families in Jerusalem facing evictions, but who remain resilient and rooted to their ancestral lands.