The bizarre incident is not an isolated one. According to the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, more than 30 Palestinian institutions and organisations have been shut down in the city since the 2001 closure of Orient House. Six-month closure orders have been continuously renewed ever since, in defiance of recommendations made in the 2003 Road Map drawn up by the Middle East Quartet as part of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

"Targeting NGOs is targeting the presence of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. NGOs are the main body providing services, because according to Oslo [the interim accords signed by Israel and the Palestinians in 1993 and 1995], the Palestinian Authority is not allowed to be in Jerusalem," Zakaria Odeh, executive director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, told Al Jazeera. "All policies, including house demolitions and residency revocations, have the goal to alter the demographic structure of Jerusalem as a whole."

The closure of Palestinian institutions in the city has been condemned by the European Union for creating a dangerous leadership vacuum, and by Palestinian rights groups as a violation of international law and an attempt to stifle Palestinian political, cultural and social life in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel does not allow the PA to carry out any political activities in the city, and a number of organisations and events have been shut down on this basis. The Palestinian National Theatre, Hakawati, has often seen its events disrupted.

In 2009, when Jerusalem was nominated as the Arab Capital of Culture, Israeli police shut down events organised for an international literature festival on the grounds that they constituted PA political activities. More recently, last December, the theatre was prevented from holding a singing event on the basis that its organisers were affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a left-wing Palestinian political party that Israel deems a "terrorist" group.

Since the closure of Orient House, Palestinians have lost access to 14,000 books, periodicals, documents, personal archives and maps collected by the Arab Studies Society.