On a Friday afternoon on Harlem Avenue, the parking lot off 93rd Street fills before noon prayer the way a stadium lot fills before kickoff. Men in pressed shirts and grandfathers in keffiyehs cross the asphalt toward a green dome topped with a crescent. A few blocks south, the air outside a bakery smells of warm sugar and orange-blossom water, and the cheese pull of fresh knafeh draws a line out the door.
This stretch of the Chicago southwest suburbs holds one of the largest concentrations of Palestinians anywhere in the United States. The Palestinians in Bridgeview did not arrive overnight. They came in a slow chain that began on Chicago’s South Side more than a century ago, and the village names they carry are still spoken at weddings here.
Bridgeview: The Place
Bridgeview is a small working-class village in Cook County, roughly 15 miles southwest of the Loop. It sits in a cluster of suburbs along Harlem Avenue, neighbored by Oak Lawn, Burbank, Palos Hills, and Worth. The housing is modest and mostly postwar: brick bungalows, ranch homes, and low strip malls. Harlem Avenue, the spine of the community, runs north to south and carries the commercial life of what residents call Little Palestine.
How Bridgeview Became Little Palestine
Before the Palestinians
For most of the twentieth century, Bridgeview was an ordinary blue-collar suburb of Eastern European and Irish Catholic families, the kind of place defined by its parish and its factory shifts. The land where the mosque now stands was swampy prairie on the edge of town as late as the 1970s. The Palestinian story here does not start in Bridgeview at all. It starts downtown, decades earlier, among single men with suitcases of goods.
The Palestinians Arrive
Arabs began coming to Chicago around the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and a steady Palestinian stream followed in the early 1900s. They were mostly young men who came alone, intending to earn and return home. They worked as peddlers and shopkeepers, selling dry goods and notions in the Black neighborhoods of the South Side, and many lived in all-male rooming houses near 18th Street and Michigan Avenue.
Among the earliest were émigrés from Beitunia, a village just west of Ramallah in the West Bank, who started arriving around 1910. They held prayers in a building basement near 18th Street, then drifted south as their numbers grew. In 1954, a handful of these Beitunia families formally founded the Mosque Foundation, dreaming of a building of their own. The first prayer leader, Khalil Zayid, was an English-illiterate salesman who sent his daughter door to door to raise money.
The community moved with the city. By the 1970s the heart of Palestinian Chicago had shifted to a business strip along 63rd Street, where Arab-owned groceries, insurance offices, restaurants, and law practices clustered between Kedzie and Pulaski. Then came the next leap. From the late 1970s and accelerating through the 1990s, families followed the American pattern out of the city and into the suburbs, and Bridgeview became the new center of gravity.
Bridgeview at Its Peak
The mosque made the suburb a destination. In 1981, after raising about $1.2 million, the Mosque Foundation opened a permanent home on swampy land at 7360 West 93rd Street, with a prayer hall built for 300. Families bought the bungalows around it so they could walk to Friday prayer. Within a generation the congregation had grown into one of the busiest in the country, today serving a community counted in the tens of thousands.
Schools followed the families. Aqsa School opened in 1986 as the first all-girls Islamic school in the United States, and Universal School opened its doors in 1990, both within a short walk of the mosque. Bakeries, butchers, sweet shops, and travel agencies filled the strip malls along Harlem Avenue, their signs lettered in Arabic and English. By the 2000s a child could grow up here speaking Arabic at home, studying Quran on Sundays, and buying knafeh after school, all within a few square miles.
The Change
The community’s hardest public test came in September 2001. In the days after the attacks of September 11, a crowd of several hundred, some carrying flags and one truck bearing a sign reading “Kill All the Arabs,” marched toward the Bridgeview mosque from the surrounding suburbs. Police escorted worshippers out before the crowd arrived, the demonstrations continued for three nights, and officers from around ten departments sealed off the streets, checking IDs of residents trying to reach their own homes.
The schools closed for several days out of concern for the children. The mosque and its neighbors held on, and the community that had been suddenly made visible chose to stay rooted and to organize. In the years since, Palestinian Bridgeview has only deepened, adding wedding halls, dessert cafes, and a generation of American-born sons and daughters who run the family businesses and increasingly enter public life.
The Landmarks of Little Palestine
The Mosque Foundation (7360 W. 93rd St.) is the anchor of it all. Founded in 1954 by Beitunia émigrés and rehoused in Bridgeview in 1981, it grew from a 300-seat hall into one of America’s largest congregations under Imam Jamal Said, its religious leader since 1985. On a busy Friday its lot overflows and worshippers spill toward the surrounding streets.
Aqsa School opened in 1986 as the first all-girls Islamic school in the United States, and recently marked its fortieth year. Generations of Palestinian American women have graduated from its classrooms. Nearby Universal School, a K-12 academy that opened in 1990, sits among the Muslim American Society offices and a youth center, forming a small campus of community institutions clustered near the mosque.
Nablus Sweets (8320 S. Harlem Ave.) built its reputation on knafeh made with cheese imported to taste like the dessert sold on the streets of Nablus itself. Owner Mohammad Ahmad turned a craving for home into one of the corridor’s best-known shops. A few minutes away, Al Bawadi Grill, near 87th Street and Harlem Avenue, opened in 2008 and grew into one of the region’s most celebrated Palestinian kitchens, drawing diners from across Chicagoland for its grilled meats and hummus.
Al-Rasheed Bakery carried the falafel trade into the suburbs. Othman Othman, who had run Palestinian businesses in the city since the late 1970s, brought his bakery to Bridgeview in 1999, part of the wave that turned Harlem Avenue into a food destination. Newer arrivals keep coming: Milk Cake Bakery (9150 S. Harlem Ave.) and the restaurant M’dakhan (9115 S. Harlem Ave.) opened in recent years, proof that the strip is still being built, storefront by storefront.
Where the Bridgeview Palestinians Came From
The oldest thread runs back to Beitunia and Ramallah, the twin towns north of Jerusalem that seeded the community a century ago. Beitunia, the Muslim village, supplied the founders of the Mosque Foundation; Ramallah, historically Christian, sent families who built Orthodox parishes in the southwest suburbs. The pattern was classic chain migration: one cousin sponsored the next, an entire village hometown gradually re-rooting itself in Cook County.
Later waves widened the map. Families trace their origins to al-Bireh, the city beside Ramallah, and to West Bank villages such as Turmus Ayya, El Jib, and Beit Hanina, many arriving after the wars of 1948 and 1967 reshaped their world. State Representative Abdelnasser Rashid, the first Palestinian American in the Illinois General Assembly, grew up tied to Turmus Ayya, a village that has sent so many of its sons and daughters to the Chicago area that the connection runs both ways across the ocean.
Bridgeview Today
Little Palestine is no longer just an informal nickname. In 2026, after resolutions cleared Cook County and the Illinois legislature, a “Welcome to Little Palestine” sign went up on Harlem Avenue, and the corridor from 79th Street south was given the honorary designation “Little Palestine Way.” Officials counted more than 200 Arab-owned businesses along the route, and a business association now markets the strip as a cultural and culinary destination.
Estimates of the Palestinian population vary widely. The Census counts more than 18,000 in Cook County, but sociologist Louise Cainkar and others put the true figure for greater Chicago closer to 70,000 to 100,000, which would make it the largest Palestinian community in the United States. Whatever the exact number, the community has moved from the margins into civic life, sending its first members to the statehouse and onto local boards.
The Palestinians in Bridgeview have carried real grief in recent years, and the corridor has held vigils and quiet fundraising drives. Yet the daily rhythm endures: the Friday lots fill, the knafeh sells out, and the children who grew up here are opening the next bakery and running for the next office. The suitcase that came through 18th Street a century ago has become a place with its own street sign.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Palestinians settle in Bridgeview, Illinois?
The Palestinians in Bridgeview followed a chain that began on Chicago’s South Side in the early 1900s, when Palestinian men worked as peddlers and grocers. As families prospered they moved outward, first to a business strip along 63rd Street and then, from the late 1970s through the 1990s, to Bridgeview and its neighboring suburbs, drawn by affordable housing and the mosque.
Is Bridgeview still a Palestinian community today?
Yes. The Palestinians in Bridgeview remain a thriving community, and in 2026 the Harlem Avenue corridor was officially designated “Little Palestine Way” by Cook County and the State of Illinois. More than 200 Arab-owned businesses line the route, and the area is widely considered home to one of the largest Palestinian populations in the country.
What are the most famous landmarks in Little Palestine?
The best-known landmark is the Mosque Foundation at 7360 West 93rd Street, founded in 1954 and rehoused in Bridgeview in 1981. Other anchors include Aqsa School, the first all-girls Islamic school in the United States, and food destinations along Harlem Avenue such as Nablus Sweets and Al Bawadi Grill.
Where did the Bridgeview Palestinians come from?
The oldest families came from Beitunia and Ramallah, twin towns north of Jerusalem in the West Bank. Later arrivals traced their roots to al-Bireh and to villages such as Turmus Ayya, El Jib, and Beit Hanina, many leaving after the wars of 1948 and 1967.
When did Palestinians first arrive in the Chicago area?
Arabs began arriving around the 1893 World’s Fair, and Palestinians from Beitunia followed in numbers starting around 1910, first settling near 18th Street on the South Side. The move to the southwest suburbs, including Bridgeview, came much later, peaking in the 1990s.
If your family’s story passed through the rooming houses of 18th Street, the groceries of 63rd Street, or the bungalows around the Bridgeview mosque, those names and migrations are worth preserving for the next generation. You can read related histories of the Palestinian community in Paterson, New Jersey, the Arab community in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and the Lebanese of Dearborn, Michigan.