Orient House

Orient House (Hebrew: האוריינט האוס‎‎, Arabic: بيت الشرق‎‎; bayt ʾal-šarq) is a building located in East Jerusalem that served as the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1980s and 1990s.

Built in 1897 by Ismail Musa Al-Husseini, it has been owned by the Al-Husseini family since. Originally intended to serve as a family residence, it was at times vacated to host important guests, such as Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in 1898 and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1936.

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Orient House remained east of the ceasefire line, in the area controlled by Jordan. Between 1948–1950, the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was located there and two years later, its owner turned it into a luxury hotel called "The New Orient House".

Following the 1967 Six-Day War and the capture of East Jerusalem by Israel, the hotel was closed and the building was mostly neglected. Many of the first residents of the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiryat Itri, who arrived from the United States in 1968 before their flats were ready, were temporarily lodged in the Orient House.

In 1983, the Arab Scientific Association, a PLO-affiliated organization led by Faisal Husseini, rented a part of the house. In 1988, Israel closed the House and banned PLO activity in it. It was renewed four years later in 1992. It was then rented and renovated by Husseini. In an exchange of letters preceding the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel promised that it would not violate the right of the House to continue to operate freely.

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