Ir Amim (City of Nations/City of Peoples) is an Israeli NGO which focuses exclusively on Jerusalem in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its mission is to render Jerusalem a more equitable, just, and sustainable city for the Palestinians and Israelis who share it and to help secure an agreed resolution on the city, achievable only through a negotiated peace process. Ir Amim envisions a Jerusalem that ensures the dignity and welfare of all its residents and safeguards the rights of both peoples to their homes and the city while upholding both their historic, religious, and political attachments to Jerusalem. To this end, Ir Amim engages in sustained monitoring, reporting, expert geopolitical analysis, policy and legal advocacy, and public education and outreach in order to advance human rights and re-orient discourse and policies on Jerusalem.
Ir Amim’s work tackles issues that precipitate the fracturing of Palestinian space and further consolidation of Israeli control over East Jerusalem, thereby harming Palestinian individual and collective rights and undermining conditions for an agreed political resolution. Since its inception in 2000, among its fields of operation, Ir Amim has tirelessly advocated for the rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, challenging the policies of discriminatory urban planning, settlement construction, displacement and dispossession (i.e. home demolitions, evictions, land confiscation), disparities in education and service provision and the erosion of the status quo on the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif.
Ir Amim’s efforts to impede developments antithetical to human rights and to a future agreed resolution have earned it a reputation for integrity and efficacy both on local and international levels. Over the years, it has become the go-to source for timely and reliable information, geopolitical analysis, and policy recommendations on the aforementioned trends. As a result, Ir Amim was afforded the distinct honor to address in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in July 2021 per the invitation of the French Presidency to the UNSC on the topic of heightened measures of Palestinian displacement in East Jerusalem.
