East Jerusalem ALWAYS had a strong Jewish presence. There was no such thing as ARAB East Jerusalem until the Jordanians dynamited 58 Jewish schools and synagogues and evicted the thousands of Jews who lived there in 1949, thereby making it Judenrein.
Except for the period immediately following the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in 136 CE, Jews have always lived continuously in East Jerusalem for thousands of years. The ironic thing of all is that Arabs claim the Jewish people are ethnically cleansing them, but the truth is that they have been ethnically cleansing the Jews and the world for centuries!