Orient House (Jerusalem)

 place with historical importance, mansion / manor house / villa, 1897_construction

Former family home of Ismail Musa al-Husseini from 1897 to 1945, then became the headquarters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1992 to 2001.
Bayt al-Sharq in romanized Arabic.

It was occassionally visited by foreign political figures: Wilhelm II of Germany and Augusta Victoria during their visit to Palestine in 1898—Abdullah I of Transjordan, Ali of Hejaz and Prince Zeid when they offered condolences in 1931 for Hussein bin Ali, who started the 1916 Arab Revolt and Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Menen Asfaw who both first sought refuge at the House in their two-month exile due to their Italian overthrow in 1936.

Ownership was handed to Ismail's son Ibrahim after his death in 1945; the House then became a haven for Palestinian refugees from Deir Yassin after the massacre there during the 1948 war.
UNRWA had its headquarters at the upper story of the Orient House from its founding in 1949 to 1950.

The villa was open to the public with the New Orient House hotel until 1967, which after the Six-Day War and the annexation of East Jerusalem, closed and temporarily lodged by settlers waiting for their homes' completion in Kiryat Itri.

In 1983, the PLO-affiliated Arab Studies Society moved there; it was a library about Palestinian history that would go on to have around 17,000 books, both in English and Arabic. During the First Intifada, the House was used as a stage for the uprising and attacked by IDF numerous times until they raided and closed it in July 1988.
Reopened in October 1992 after renovation. All of the PLO activity was then devoted there.
Raided and preemptively closed on the morning of August 10, 2001.

orienthouse.org