[1] Sakakini was born into a Palestinian Christian Orthodox family in Jerusalem in the Ottoman Empire on 23 January 1878.

During his nine-month stay in America, Khalil Sakakini wrote for Arabic literary magazines on the East Coast, and did translations for Professor Richard Gottheil at Columbia University.

Upon his return in 1908, Khalil Sakakini worked as a journalist for the Jerusalem-printed magazine Al-Asma'i and taught Arabic at the Salahiyya school and tutored expatriates at the American Colony.

[clarification needed] Sakakini's wife, Sultana, died in October 1939 and was buried in the Greek Orthodox cemetery on Mount Zion.

His son, Sari, completed his Master's degree at the University of Michigan and returned to Jerusalem, to work for the American consulate.

There, Khalil Sakakini was nominated by the Egyptian writer Taha Hussein to join the Arabic Language Academy.

[7] Sari Sakakini's sudden death of a heart attack in 1953 at the age of 39 was a devastating blow.

Hala Sakakini edited her father's journals, published in 1955, and wrote two memoirs in English, Jerusalem and I and Twosome.

He also introduced new methods of teaching Arabic, and made it the primary language of instruction instead of Turkish.

[3] Wasif Jawhariyyeh, noted for his memoirs of early 20th century Jerusalem, was a pupil of his in the Dusturiyyah School.

Whenever he noticed the slightest inappropriate conduct on the part of a student, particularly on the moral level, not withstanding his fatherly love for the pupil in question, he went berserk and pulled on an angry face, frightening the student who had the utmost respect and esteem for him and who would then amend his behavior immediately.Sakakini led a movement to reform and change into a more Arab approach to what he considered to be a corrupt Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, and wrote a pamphlet in 1913 titled "The Orthodox Renaissance in Palestine", which led to his excommunication from the Greek Orthodox Church.

[10] Upon his release, Sakakini boarded for a brief time with Musa Alami, a former pupil, and then joined the Arab Revolt, for which he composed its anthem.

[15] He saw Zionism as a great threat before the First World War[16] and believed that the Jewish right to the land had expired while the Arab right was "a living one".

[17][18] Sakakini, listing some of the punishments to be meted out: bomb and shoot the British and Jewish invaders, torch Jewish fields and orange groves, ambush routine traffic, block roads, derail trains, cut power lines.

An independent Palestinian Arab government should have used force to prevent them from landing, and he felt that while elderly Jews could come to live out their last years as had happened in the past, a thriving Jewish community under British protection should be forbidden.

[26] Sakakini's published work includes educational treatises, poetry collections, literary, philosophical and political essays, and his diaries.

In 2003 too, Sakakini's heirs bequeathed the center his collection of publications, books, and personal effects.