North Olmsted Blooms as a Hub for Cleveland's Palestinian Diaspora

If one were to drive west on Lorain Road in North Olmsted, past Great Northern Blvd., you would encounter most, if not all, of the commercial attributes of Suburban America. The Wendy's and the Chipotle. Speedway and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Mattress Firm and Buffalo Wild Wings.

Yet, head a block north onto Brookpark Extension Road, about a stone's throw from North Olmsted's red-and-white-checkered water tower, sandwiched in between Guitar Center and an Ohio BMV, and you would find one of the quickest-growing Palestinian small business hubs in Northeast Ohio.

Here, nestled in and around two tiny retail plazas, are 20 shops owned by Arab-Americans, half of them of the Palestinian diaspora, that have opened on Brookpark Extension this decade. If you wanted to, you could run a day's worth of errands here: get your hair cut, nails done, pick up chocolates, order your meds, get a coffee, grab the dress for the cousin's wedding.

"I’ve been here two years and have gone to six ribbon cuttings on that street," Max Upton, the head of North Olmsted's Economic & Community Development Department, told Scene recently. "I think that they found community here, a good quality of life. A welcoming city."

Upton's recollection, and this Palestinian Town Square tucked in North Olmsted's commercial recesses, is a great reflection of changing demographics in the past few years.

According to the American Community Survey, the number of Palestinians in the U.S. jumped from 72,112 in 2000 to 85,186 in 2013. Today, as per the latest U.S. Census count by ancestry, that number's pushing 140,000. (Cleveland has the country's seventh largest Palestinian community, a recent count by ZIPAtlas found.)

And that population trend is definitely noticeable in North Olmsted, which, according to Upton, is about 12 percent Arab-American—a near doubling since the 2010 Census. That growth, seen in its high schools and housing developments, has coupled with affordable rents and a pressing yearning for community, that happened to find its outlet on a throughway, near two outlet stores and an Ollie's.

That need has only grown more dire in the midst of war between Israel and Hamas, when dangers have grown near for far-off family members, and news comes swift and negative, often through the precarious lens of TikTok or a WhatsApp thread.

"We're not in the mood to buy," Eman Muontaser, the owner of Iman Le Elegance, a clothing boutique that specializes in wedding gowns, said in her shop. "People canceled their weddings. Everybody's stressed out. Everybody's depressed—they come to me, they start talking about the war."

Muontaser, who started selling Moroccan kaftans and Palestinian thoubs in 2009, opened up her boutique on the western edge of Brookpark Extension about a year and a half ago. She felt urged to by two unrelated forces: her children were aging and there was a growing Palestinian community around her. "I studied the demographic," Muontaser said, smiling. "After I understood the community, I expanded."

A sizable influence for Iman Le Elegance, a purposeful amalgation of Arabic and French, is a forthcoming expansion of the Palestinian Beit Hanina Community Center, which will be situated across Brookpark Extension, and is currently in the fundraising process.

And not just because of the center's promise to host Arabic courses for kids. Beit Hanina vows, its directors said, to host about "two to three" Palestinian engagement celebrations a week.

Muontaser said she'll cover the dresses. "Anything that's related to weddings, I do," she said. "We try to work on lifting the load from the parents, especially the mother."

To Beit Hanina director Nassr Wahdan, that starts with a huge curtailing of time and gas expenditures. For Wahdan, who was born in Chicago to Palestinian parents escaping the 1967 Six-Day War, a diaspora town square with a banquet room close by is bound to keep Northeast Ohioan Arabs from the hike to similar centers in Michigan and Illinois.

"Seriously, do you know why we go to Michigan?" Wahdan, a gentleman in his fifties, told Scene said walking along the plaza on Broopark Extension. "We go to the nutshop. We go eat. We hookah. We go to the barbershop. Then we drive all the way home."

Wahdan along with his friend Talal Hamed, duck into The Nut Shop, where 39-year-old owner Mohammad Wishah is bagging smoked Palestinian nuts and dried watermelon seeds. Over there, near the candy aisle, are bowls of nougats. In the back, behind the counter, are gold Islamic dishes on display.

Like neighbor Muontaser, Wishah opened his Nut Shop in 2022 bolstered by both the market need and a pressing itch for community. He also witnessed friends drive to New Jersey or New York to buy the celebratory foods the coffee beans — the chocolates and the nuts — to take home to Cleveland.

Which gives Wishah a glowing sense of personal pride for what he's built: "Like in Northeast Ohio?" he said. "I don't think there's another one."

Wahdan confirmed it. "No, it's the first of its kind here," he said.
That need to bring Palestine goods and culture closer to home also led siblings Aisha and Mahmoud Sulieman to open dessert shop Oh, Crepe! in September. Mahmoud had often drove around on weekdays to find dessert foods he admired, yet came up short. "So he decided," Aisha recalled, "'I'm gonna make my own.'"

Last week, with the beginning of the Ramadan holiday, that dessert gap only became a lot more intriguing. The Suliemans put katayef, a stuffed pancake, and booza, Palestinian pistachio ice cream on the menu. Having both speciality items on the menu, along with a war going on overseas, led to a particular instance of good and bad for Aisha, as it has for others on the road.

People will "call and ask, 'Is this Palestinian owned?' 'Are you Palestinian?'" she said. "People called and said, I just want to confirm it's Palestinian owned. And then they would come and want to support us, and that's what they would tell us why."

Although Upton said there's been three instances of "accosting" since October 7, none of the businesses Scene spoke with reported anything similar. "It's a scary situation. You just don't know how people look at you," Aisha said. "Like, 'Are you the enemy or are you not?'"

As for the new Beit Hanina across the street, Mahdar and Hamed said that the social club has wrapped up the construction bid process, and should be finished with its renovation by the end of 2024.

It will, as the idea goes, replace the Beit Hanina further east on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, which Mahdar framed as aging and inconvenient for, ironically, the Palestinian diaspora in the suburbs.

"We were only, what, like 6,000 square feet?" he speculated. He looked across Brookpark Extension to the building. "Here we have 22,000 square feet." (And parking, Mahdar was sure to point out.)

He turned around to the plaza itself. "Oh, and in five years?" he said. "This will probably be all Palestinian."
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