A new Palestinian coffee house in Derry has been ‘embraced’ by the people of the city, as exceptional demand has meant it needed to temporarily close after two days of trading to hire additional staff.
Jerusalem Café, which is located on Great James Street, was welcomed with queues as it opened last Sunday.
The owners shared online that it would need to close until Wednesday, March 19, in order to hire more staff following two days of high demand.
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People Before Profit Councillor Shaun Harkin said that the people of the city were “delighted” to have the café open and that it has been “very much welcomed”.
*CLOSED FOR 1 WEEK* We are extremely grateful for the incredible welcome we have had in Derry. The only two days we…Posted by Jerusalem – Bakery & Coffee House on Tuesday 11 March 2025
“It’s clear there’s been fantastic solidarity for Gaza and Palestine particularly over the last 17 months of genocide,” he said.
“There’s been many very large demonstrations here, lots of fundraising.
“I think people are excited to have something that is Palestinian here.
“I think people are also excited and happy that there’s an opportunity for people to experience Palestinian cuisine and it adds to the diversity of the city as well.
“For many different reasons, I think people have embraced it.”
Mr Harkin said that one person told him they had been queuing for an hour and a half on the café’s opening day last week.
He added that people in the city were able to draw parallels between their own struggles, living through the Troubles and identifying with what the Palestinian people have gone through.
“Derry’s a great city for activism; people are very proud of the role that Derry played in the civil rights movement.
“The scale of what’s happened in terms of the devastation in Gaza over the last 17 months and the number of people killed is much greater than [what] the people experienced here and, obviously people understand that, but I think that’s why there is that international solidarity.”
The owners of the café said that they were “extremely grateful for the incredible welcome” they had received from the city in a post online.
“The only two days we have been open, we have sold out hours before closing time,” they said.
The café sells baked goods, breads, pastries, kunafa and falafel as well as Arabic coffee – items which are sold in shops “all around Palestine”.
“We wanted to bring a taste of all of those things to Derry,” they said.
“There is absolutely nowhere else we would have rather opened Jerusalem.”
They highlighted that the Palestinian people were “living in a time of genocide” where “the Israeli settler colony was and still is trying to erase” their country, villages, culture and their “very existence”.
At the start of the year, the Palestinian Healthy Ministry estimated that just under 50,000 people, most of whom were civilians including women and children, had been killed by Israeli attacks on the Gaza strip.
“If anything in the diaspora we wanted to establish a place where our culture temporarily lived on, temporarily thrived, outside of Palestine until our inevitable return,” they added in the post.