For both Palestinian and Israeli Jerusalemites, the term Wadi al-Joz is synonymous with the car repair shops that line the narrow valley. In walking distance to the Old City, Wadi al-Joz is one of the newer Jerusalem neighborhoods taking its current shape after 1948. However, in contrast to the otherwise affluent Palestinian neighborhoods in north-central Jerusalem, Wadi al-Joz is marked by sharp class differences. The poorer areas are largely clustered around the industrial zone in the valley; the older, more established neighborhoods are situated on the valley‘s slopes.

Wadi al-Joz, literally the “valley of walnuts,” was part of the agricultural estate system that defined the areas outside the Old City well into the 19th century.

Affluent families in the Old City administered these agricultural estates, lining the countryside with their fortified summer residences. The largest and oldest landholders in Wadi al-Joz, the Khatib family, built its residence about 400 years ago. According to the family’s late 20th century self representation, the Khatibs settled in Jerusalem sometime in the 14th century. To underline its rootedness in al-Quds, the family uses the descriptor kinani jama‘i to distinguish itself from other families with the same surname (e.g., the Khatibs of Hebron and ‘Izariyya). According to Amin Khatib, the family—a collection of “teachers, scientists and imams”—administered its lands and mills from their residence at Bab al-Hadid, next to Haram al-Sharif. After the earthquake of 1926, the family permanently relocated to Wadi al-Joz.

Another landed family that was instrumental in the modern development of the valley, building a series of houses on the slopes of Wadi al-Joz in the first quarter of the 20th century, were the Hidmis. In contrast to the Khatibs, the Hidmis were relative newcomers to the city. The family patriarch had come to Palestine (along with his sister) in 1831 as part of Ibrahim Pasha’s expedition. He served as the governor of Hebron until he was forced to leave in conjunction with the uprising of 1834. Thereafter, the merchant family settled in the Old City of Jerusalem and began to establish local roots. The patriarch not only married into a Jerusalem family but also changed the family’s name. According to family legend a waly (Muslim holy man) appeared to a woman of the family and promised that her son would be cured of the measles if the family would change its name from Mu‘awwad to Hidmi, the name of a waly buried in Jabal Khalil (hills of Hebron).

Parts of the Hidmi family left the Old City and moved to Wadi al-Joz as early as 1870, renting their Old City properties to poorer relations. According to Arafat Hidmi, in this century landowners in Wadi al-Joz hired villagers from Al-Thuri, Hizma, Anata, and ‘Isawiyya to work as day laborers on their lands, returning to their villages at the end of the day.

Wadi al-Joz took its present shape in the years between the 1948 and 1967 wars. Both its proximity to the Old City and its relatively sparse character appealed to people, particularly refugees and rural migrants, looking for a place to live in the city. In 1948 refugees from West Jerusalem resettled in Wadi al-Joz. In the words of Ziad Zayda, a merchant at Bab al-Amud, “We came to Wadi al-Joz as refugees, it was one of the few empty areas around the Old City in 1948.” The mukhtar of Namamra, a subdivision of the West Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Baqa, fled to Wadi al-Joz together with his family in 1948. A politics of location continues to inform belonging in Wadi al-Joz. To ask for the mukhtar in the streets of Wadi al-Joz, one is invariably referred to Rafiq Namari. These older reference systems complement the diversity and complexity of the urban transformation that Wadi al-Joz has experienced since 1948.

Rural migration in the 1950s and 1960s has probably had the most significant impact on the development of Wadi al-Joz. Jabal Abu Jibna, an elevation in the heart of the wadi, is a shanty-area; it is home to approximately 350 people of rural descent. The hill takes its name from the owners of the land. The Abu Jibna family left the Bab al-Silsila neighborhood in the Old City at the end of the 19th century and invested in 44 dunam of land in Wadi al-Joz. Today the bulk of this large extended family resides in Shu‘fat. According to the Abu Jibnas, the rural migrants on the hill initially squatted on their land. After 1967, the hill was zoned as a “green area” and consequently lost its commercial viability. At that point the Abu Jibnas negotiated a tenancy agreement.

The 12–13 families living on Jabal Abu Jibna migrated from the Sa‘ir region in Jabal Khalil. One of the elderly tenants interviewed was born in Kerak, Jordan, and migrated to Jabal Khalil during the British Mandate. He came to Jerusalem in 1955, raising a family of 10 on the wages of a day laborer. The tenant reported paying a yearly rent of $282 for his home. About a decade ago the municipality connected the area to the city’s water system; however, the community continues to rely on generators for electricity. According to the elderly tenant, his children and those of his neighbors inhabit a position similar to his own on the margins of primarily the Israeli economy (e.g., as maintenance workers and cab drivers).

Just below Jabal Abu Jibna is the shrine of Simon the Just (Shimon Hatzadik) [in Sheikh Jarrah—Ed.], whom legend claims to be the fifth in line to take the Torah from Moses. In 1890 the shrine itself and some land surrounding it were purchased by a Sephardic philanthropic association. Ownership of the land around the shrine is in dispute, yet the keepers of the shrine report generally cordial relations with the Palestinian neighborhood (save for the occasional stone throwing incidents on both sides). Approximately 200 people visit the shrine each day, many of whom arrive on foot from the nearby ultra orthodox neighborhoods of West Jerusalem.

The tomb of Shimon Hatzadik is adjacent to two Palestinian houses. A third building serves as the administrative offices of the shrine. According to Moshe Oxenkrug, the recently retired keeper of the shrine for the past 23 years, the previous Palestinian tenants of the building were compensated for their property in 1967 and left for the U.S. shortly thereafter. Of the two inhabited Palestinian buildings, the Abu Diab family shares a courtyard with the tomb. As Hasan Abu Diab explains, the close quarters shared with the stream of visitors attending to the shrine created a set of tensions and conflicts, which prompted the family to erect a concrete fence separating the properties.

The last Palestinian mayor of Jerusalem, Rawhi Khatib, had moved the Industrial Zone from Nablus Road to Wadi al-Joz. Ostensibly this was done to beautify downtown East Jerusalem and to make room for a centrally located bus station. However, the site chosen for the Industrial Zone—the valley of Wadi al-Joz on 12 dunam of private waqf land owned by the Khatib family—has had its share of critics. As a mechanic working in one of the car repair shops put it, “The move was made so that the Khatib family could benefit from the rent paid by the mechanics and garage owners.”

The redrawing of the city’s urban map in 1967 led to a business boom in the Industrial Zone that lasted into the early 1980s. Wadi al-Joz became a main thoroughfare, and according to Awad Abu Sulb, another mechanic, Israelis made up 70 percent of the customers. The costs of setting up a garage in Wadi al-Joz are significantly lower than elsewhere. Avil Tal, an Israeli garage owner in the Industrial Zone who lives on a kibbutz between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, cites cost as the main reason for his choice of location. Today, his Shir Garage is the only Israeli business in Wadi al-Joz. A few years ago, there were three Israeli garages; two have since closed shop and rented the space to Palestinian businesses. Avil Tal acquired his garage in 1986 by paying “key-money” to the Palestinian owners of the property. While he clearly draws upon an Israeli clientele, particularly from the military, he is also proud of his multicultural staff and customers. To prove his point, he points to two cars currently under repair in his shop: an army vehicle to the right and a Birzeit University student’s car to the left.

The construction of new road systems in the last decade, particularly Highway 1, isolated the Industrial Zone once again, but it was the intifada that had the most significant impact on business. Israeli customers stayed away, partly from fear and partly because of the limited services available during the frequent and unpredictable strike days. Despite changing political conditions, what had made Wadi al-Joz a success were its flexible, informal labor practices. Haj Husayn Muhdir, a garage owner who had started out on Nablus Road before he was moved to Wadi al-Joz 35 years ago, maintains that the essential factors accounting for the Industrial Zone’s success lay in the fact that the garages could fix a car for half the price in half the time than the garages in West Jerusalem. Today garage owners and mechanics in the Industrial Zone are struggling to survive. After the intifada, fewer Israeli customers returned, and according to Abu Sulb, “even Palestinians now go to other larger and more developed industrial zones in the West Bank.”