The writer’s Palestinian friend, a blind school principal, has resisted eight years of Israeli efforts to drive his family out of Jerusalem.

My friend, Nurredin Amro, his extended family and their entire neighborhood are on a list: their homes in East Jerusalem are targeted for demolition by the Israeli authorities.

Ethnic cleansing is not just the moment of violence when a family is uprooted, or a neighborhood emptied. As I’ve watched Nurredin experience it, demolition is a slow, confusing, and surreal process of breaking people — and resisting it is a tiring battle requiring heroic levels of energy, patience and hope plus support from justice-minded people around the world.

When I tell people Nurredin’s story, they doubt my claim that one family could withstand such cruelty for so long and stand up against the entire Israeli government apparatus. But Nurredin has, and so have tens of thousands of Palestinians who with their steadfastness, their sumud, thwart Israel’s ongoing colonial project. Their stories are important.

Nurredin, Nabiha, Abed and Aseel Amro cleaning freshly picked olives. November 2022.

I first met Nurredin in Jordan at a gathering of the Arab World Social Innovators, a program of the New York-based Synergos Institute. Nurredin has been recognized by Synergos, Ashoka, the British Council and others for his trailblazing work advocating for education for children with disabilities. Wherever Nurredin went, there was always a crowd gathered around him laughing at his jokes. That was in 2010, the same year that Nurredin, blind since birth, ran in the New York Marathon.

I was living in Jerusalem at the time, and I became a supporter of Siraj al-Quds School and Society for the Blind, a place for inclusive education that Nurredin founded in 2007, and where he is the director. It was clear to anyone who visited the school that Nurredin’s leadership and love uplifted the lives of hundreds of Palestinian children and families, many who live in poverty, victimized by violence and suffering multiple disabilities.

Nurredin’s heroic work on behalf of these children and families is an example of the critical grassroots community support that helps Palestinians in Jerusalem resist the relentless efforts of the Israeli government to make Jerusalem unlivable for Palestinians, so they can maintain a Jewish majority in accordance with their municipal plans.

Children at Sir al-Quds school. September 2013. (photo Nora Lester Murad)

As if it weren’t enough running a Palestinian school in the very challenging context of Israeli control over East Jerusalem, in 2015 Nurredin’s house in the as-Sawanna valley between the Old City of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives was partially demolished. The police admitted to neighbors they had no permit for the demolition, and the home was built legally. (Palestinians in East Jerusalem are often forced to build their homes without Israeli permits because they are so infrequently granted.)

Terrifying to imagine, police with dogs and helicopters surrounded the neighborhood before dawn, preventing journalists and activists from coming to the scene. Nurredin and his wife, Nabiha, were home with their three children ages 5-12, and his brother Sharif (who is also blind) was in the adjoining house with his wife and four children, all under age 14. Their mother lived with them at the time. By the time the partial demolition was over, each family was left with a room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Afterward, Nurredin put up a fence to protect the house from the adjacent road. That was also demolished some months later: Israeli officials claimed it was a cleanliness violation.

Nurredin wrote an op-ed about his experience in The Washington Post under the title “Israel Wrecked My House And Now It Wants My Land” in 2015. Sadly, he was right about the land.

In the years following the 2015 home demolition, many buildings on the hill behind Nurredin’s house were demolished. When the home inhabited by 13 members of the Tutanji family was threatened, I helped bring international volunteers to the site to discourage the Israelis. But the volunteers were only able to stay a short while before moving on to show solidarity to another family — so many are at risk.

I spoke to the Tutanji family as they awaited the dreaded demolition. Their fear and anxiety were palpable as they moved back and forth through the rooms in which their children had grown up.

After the demolition, Hoda Tutanji, matriarch of the family, vowed never to leave the place where their home had stood, but the blaring heat of the summer interspersed with soaking rains made it impossible for them to stay outside, even after they stretched a flimsy tarp over the rubble-strewn area.

When I saw them later, they were staying temporarily in a nearby village, trying against the odds to find a place they could afford in Jerusalem. They knew that if they were forced deeper into the West Bank, they would forever lose the right to live in or even visit Jerusalem. I suspect that that is what eventually happened to them.

Each and every time one of Nurredin’s neighbors’ homes is demolished, he and his wife and children have to relive the trauma of their own demolition experience. Over the years, I’ve seen the mental health damage in the lines on their faces, the circles under their eyes, the stoop in their gait, and mostly, in the way their welcoming smiles feel strained. Yet they resist.

When in a nearby neighborhood Ashraf and Islam Fawaqa’s home was demolished in 2017, leaving baby Aya and her sisters homeless, Nurredin and I, with other friends, held an “Iftar on the Rubble.”

It brought together community members who had experienced demolition, those at risk of home demolition, international humanitarian actors and journalists on the site of the demolished building. Local grocery stores and restaurants donated food, and there was plenty. When the sun went down, we ate by the light of one spotlight that Ashraf had rigged from his neighbors’ electricity. Nurredin’s wife, Nabiha, was one of the speakers (Arabic). It was an uplifting event, an empowering community action in the face of overwhelming Israeli state power. All present agreed that it was a special night, one that replenished some of the hope that had been hacked away by the bulldozers.

Islam Fawaqa holds baby Aya on the rubble of their demolished home in the Sur Baher neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Nurredin and I tried to support families in other ways, too. We wrote a brochure in Arabic advising families at risk of demolition about precautions they could take to protect themselves before, during and after a demolition. I was extremely proud of the document, which meant it was an especially painful betrayal when international humanitarian actors blocked its distribution. Sadly, this was only one of many times when designated “helpers,” both international and Israeli, used their power to block grassroots self-reliance.

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Nurredin Amro’s Epic Battle to Save His Home From Demolition