Abu Dis, the town earmarked for the Palestinian capital in U.S. President Donald Trump s Middle East peace plan, lies a short distance to the east of Jerusalem s walled Old City.
A relatively featureless urban sprawl on the old road to Jericho, it has little of the religious or cultural resonance of the historic city centre, which contains sites sacred to the three great monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Abu Dis belongs to the Palestinian governorate of Jerusalem but is just outside the Israeli municipal city limits set by Israel after it captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967, later annexing it in a move not recognised by most of the international community.
What the neighbourhood does have is a large shuttered building that was constructed in an earlier, more hopeful era to be a site for the parliament of the Palestinian Authority.
That hall now lies abandoned and disused after the breakdown of the Oslo peace process and the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, two decades ago.
Since then, Palestinians in Abu Dis have been cut off from Jerusalem neighbourhoods to the west by a high concrete wall built by Israel that claimed it built it to stop suicide bombers and gunmen entering the city.
Students at a nearby university have used the wall as a backdrop to project movies during warm summer nights when they sit outside.
The White House document accompanying the U.S. plan s release said the barrier should "serve as a border between the capitals of the two parties." It said Jerusalem should "remain the sovereign capital of the State of Israel, and it should remain an undivided city." It continued: "The sovereign capital of the State of Palestine should be in the section of East Jerusalem located in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier, including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and could be named Al Quds or another name as determined by the State of Palestine."
