Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Sitting at the edge of the desert, in a place that lacks even a paved access road, in an “unrecognized” village in “the Bedouin dispersion,” is Hussein a-Sariya, a man who all at once has become the bereaved father of three sons: Nahed, Atef and Suleiman, all of whom drowned in the Mediterranean Sea last week.

Hussein, 53, lives off the income supplement he receives from the National Insurance Institute. Until last weekend, he had seven sons and three daughters. Even now, during the mourning period, he is troubled over how he will support his fatherless grandchildren. He ruminates about the situation of his eldest son, Nahed, whose home was demolished by the authorities only days after his wedding , and who drowned in the sea off Ashkelon, leaving behind two young children and a widow in the early months of pregnancy.

The “industrial zone” of the desert village of Kseifa is situated at the entrance to the town, next to where it intersects with the highway. The zone consists of Cafe Nahle, the Kseifa Meeting Place, the al-Assil beauty shop and a tire-repair shop. The cemetery in which the three sons are now buried is adjacent.

The a-Sariya family does not live in Kseifa, rather several kilometers away in a village that is not recognized by the state. It is a cluster of stone and tin shacks, without running water, without a hookup to the electricity grid, without a medical clinic and without a school.

The eastern wind, haze and sandstorms hung over the desert the whole time we were there, wandering around searching for houses − in particular the tin shacks of the a-Sariya clan. There are no street signs to direct visitors, of course. Make a right turn slightly before Arad, in the direction of the Nevatim airbase, and then take another right turn by the bridge over the wadi, onto a rocky road that tosses the car from side to side, and that runs between the fields of grain and the herds of camels.

Long convoys of desert vehicles, nearly all driven by Bedouin men who have streamed in from all over Israel, made their way here this week to comfort the mourners. Thousands attended the funeral, which took place late Sunday afternoon. The bereaved father refused to hold it until all of his sons’ bodies had been found.

Nahed was 26, and the father of a baby girl aged 26 months, and a 3-and-a-half-month-old son. Suleiman was 21 and Atef was 16. Atef recently dropped out of school and began working with two of his brothers at the Of Kor factory in Sderot. He dreamed of building a home for his mother, who separated from his father several years ago and now lives alone in Rahat.

The delegations of condolence-callers arrive in a steady stream at the mourners’ tent: Bedouin men wearing gloomy expressions, some in traditional dress, some in the garb of menial laborers. A date and a cup of coffee are served to each caller. All are received without tears by Hussein. A slender man, he looks drained and burned-out following the three days and nights during which he did not budge from the Delilah Beach in Ashkelon, where his sons met their deaths.

Tragic outing

It was last Thursday afternoon when several members of the family told their father they were going to Ashkelon − together with everyone else in Israel. The factory where they are employed was closed for the duration of Passover. The boys bought meat and then set out in two cars together with their sisters, children and wives for a typical Israeli barbecue on the beach. It had been a long time since they’d had outing like this.

They arrived at Delilah at around 4 P.M. Nahed went to work grilling the meat while Atef entered the water, which at least from the beach appeared to be relatively calm. Suleiman headed in right behind him. All of a sudden, another brother named Salim ran up, shouting: “Waves came and carried off Suleiman and Atef!”

Nahed saw them being hurled to and fro by the waves, until one wave hit hard and flipped them both upside down. The two brothers were each holding the other’s hand tightly, but then Atef slipped out of Suleiman’s grip. By this time, they were about 200 meters from the beach. Their brothers Salim and Salam rushed into the surf in an attempt to rescue them, but they, too, began to go under. A Russian-immigrant swimmer rescued them, and brought them back to shore.

Now the eldest son, Nahed, entered the water, in order to try and save his two drowning brothers. Eyewitnesses say he managed to reach them, and grabbed each with a different hand. But in a matter of seconds, both brothers slipped away and began going under. And before long Nahed disappeared from sight, as well.

All the while, their father was at home. Shortly before the tragedy he telephoned one of his daughters at the beach to find out how the barbecue was going. He asked to speak with Nahed. She told her father that Nahed was busy grilling the meat, and said he would call back. Hussein was certain that Nahed would call him back right away, as he always did.

Only a few minutes later, the daughter called back: The men went into the water and they have not come out, she said. Hussein quickly got into his neighbor’s car and rushed to Ashkelon. On the way there he telephoned his daughter, hoping that maybe she’d been mistaken and that his sons had only gone for a walk on the beach. By the time he arrived, it had started to get dark, and the rescue operation, by air and by sea, was at its height.

The women were sent home, and all of the men of the family remained at the beach. The search was renewed at dawn.

The family says it has no words with which to thank all of the authorities − the police, army and Ashkelon municipality, the divers and the numerous volunteers − for the efforts they expended in attempting to rescue their dear ones. “Everyone there did everything they could do,” says Hussein.

A forward command post was set up on the Ashkelon beach. Locals brought food and came to lend support and encouragement; the owner of a private plane volunteered his services, flying the father over the sea in a search for his sons. The following day, Hussein told the search team: “Look in the area around the breakwater. That’s where they are. If you don’t look, I will go into the water and search for them myself, come what may.”

Not long afterward, the first body, that of Suleiman, was found near the breakwater, in the spot the father had indicated.

The second body, Atef’s, was found that evening. On the third day of the search, Sunday morning, Hussein told the volunteer divers who had come from Haifa: “This will be your last dive, I promise you.” And not long afterward the body of Nahed was located; his foot was snared among the rocks of the breakwater.

Now Hussein is reminiscing about the evening of Nahed’s wedding, two years ago: The Israel Lands Authority was about to demolish the illegal house that Nahed had built with his own two hands, and Hussein barricaded himself inside with propane-gas canisters, threatening to blow up himself and his family.

“He’s just now setting out in life, and you are already destroying it,” Hussein told the ILA officials. He asked them at least to hold off with the demolition until after the wedding, and eventually they acceded.

The young couple’s home was demolished two weeks later. Since then they had been living, like many other residents of this Third World village, in a tin shack, along with their two children.

The large army of condolence-callers removes its shoes and enters a miserable shack that has been converted into a mosque, for the noon prayers. After four sleepless nights, Hussein took a sedative and finally fell asleep, on the night after the funeral.

Now more than anything else he is worried about the future of his grandchildren: where they will live and who will support them. Plus, he is left with four sons, whom he has to marry off, and for whom he must build homes.

“Now I don’t know how I’ll be able to deal with that,” he says, as yet another group of visitors, this time from the Galilee, arrives, pressing his hand, kissing him on the cheeks, trying in vain to offer him comfort.

We couldn't help ourselves: The sight of the young, newly released detainee drove us into a paroxysm of laughter. But the laughter quickly morphed into sad embarrassment. The detainee was a boy of 8, in second grade. When we met him this week, on the streets of Hebron, he was on his way to his grandfather's home. He wore a red sweatshirt emblazoned with an image of Mickey Mouse, and he had a shy smile. His mom had sent him to take something to Grandpa. Eight-year-old Ahmed Abu Rimaileh was not the youngest of the children, schoolbags on their backs, that Israel Defense Forces soldiers took into custody early on Wednesday, last week: His friend, Abdel Rahim, who was arrested with him, is only 7, and in first grade.

Twenty-seven Palestinian children never made it to school on that particular day. IDF troops lay in ambush for them from the early morning hours on the streets of the Hebron neighborhoods that are under the army's control, and arrested them indiscriminately. Only after they were in custody did the Israeli security forces examine the video footage they had in their possession, to see which of the youngsters had thrown stones at Checkpoint No. 160 earlier that morning, which separates their neighborhood from the settlers' quarter of the city. It was here, a few weeks ago, that IDF soldiers shot and killed a teenager, Mohammed Suleima, who was holding a pistol-shaped lighter.

Most of the young children were released within a few hours. The older ones were kept in detention for a few days, before being released on bail. One adult, who tried forcefully to prevent the arrest of a colleague's son, was brought to trial this week.

The fact that 18 of the children were under the age of 12, the age of criminal responsibility according to the 1971 Israeli Youth Law (Adjudication, Punishment and Methods of Treatment ), was apparently of no interest to the IDF, the Israel Police or the Border Police. Nor was the severe report issued just two weeks earlier by the United Nations Children's Fund, which condemned Israel for arresting some 7,000 Palestinian children in the past decade.

"Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized," the UNICEF report stated, and added, "In no other country are children systematically tried by juvenile military courts."

The Youth Law forbids the arrest of children under the age of 12. It also appears that the provision stipulating that older children must not be interrogated without the presence of their parents and their lawyer does not apply to Palestinian children.

A volunteer from the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group, who documented with a video camera the operation in which the children were arrested, forwarded the footage to B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and B'Tselem gave it to us. (The video can be viewed on the B'Tselem website and on YouTube.) One soldier is seen spitting crudely on the ground, another actually carries the schoolbag of his little detainee - as though he were a babysitter who had come to escort the child home from school. The amateur photographer from the ISM was deported from Israel that same day, after she also had the temerity to take part in a demonstration in Hebron against the visit of President Barack Obama.

Indeed, the mass arrest of the youngsters took place on March 20, the day Obama arrived in Israel, and the day before he made his remarks about Palestinian children in Jerusalem. "Put yourselves in the Palestinians' shoes," the president told the Israelis.

From early that same morning, Palestinian residents of Hebron noticed dozens of Israeli soldiers taking up positions in the streets and on rooftops in the neighborhood. One frightened resident called B'Tselem fieldworker Manal al-Jaabari, to ask what was going on.

Divided by age

For his part, Ahmed Abu Rimaileh woke up at 7 that morning and, with the NIS 2 he received from his mother as pocket money, set out for school; sometimes he gets NIS 1.5, sometimes 2. He attends the Hadija Elementary School down the street. Adjacent to it are three other schools that are part of an educational complex, which is located a few hundred meters from the checkpoint.

His father, Yakub, is a construction worker. His mother, Hala, is now sitting with us in their home. On the way to school, Ahmed says he stopped at the corner grocery store and bought a packet of cookies for NIS 1, and kept the other shekel for recess. As he was about to leave the store, he relates, seven or eight other children suddenly came running in, some his age, some older. Hard on their heels were soldiers, who arrested all the children in the store.

One soldier ordered Ahmed to put the cookies in his schoolbag before grabbing him by the shoulder and hauling him toward the checkpoint. Ahmed says he was very scared. He also admits that he cried, though only a little. At the checkpoint, he and all the other detained youngsters were thrust into an army vehicle - 27 children in one vehicle, some sitting, some standing, according to Ahmed's description.

There were three soldiers with them in the vehicle. Some of the children were crying, and the soldiers told them to be quiet. One child was hit, Ahmed says. They were all taken to the nearby Israeli police station, next to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where they were told to sit on the ground, in a closed courtyard. The children above age 12 were separated from the younger ones and taken to the police station in Kiryat Arba and afterward to Ofer Prison, north of Jerusalem.

Ahmed Burkan, 13, was not released until the evening. Malik Srahana, also 13, was held in custody for three days at Ofer Prison before being released on NIS 2,000 bail. B'Tselem fieldworker Musa Abu Hashhash, who met with him immediately after his release, says the teenager showed signs of trauma.

According to a report transmitted by the International Red Cross to B'Tselem, 18 of the detained children were under the age of 12. They were kept in the courtyard, with a policeman guarding them for almost two hours. No one offered them food or water.

Children asked to go to the bathroom but were forbidden to do so, Ahmed recalls. The policeman asked who among them had thrown stones, but no one confessed. He then asked if they knew which children had thrown the stones and they named two of the older ones, who had been arrested and separated from them.

After a time, three jeeps arrived and took the younger group to Checkpoint 56, next to the settler neighborhood of Tel Rumeida. There the children were met by three Palestinian police "security coordination" jeeps, which took them to their police station. The Palestinian police gave them food and asked all those who had thrown stones to raise their hand. All the hands went up.

The parents were called to come to the station to collect the children. Ahmed's parents and those of four other youngsters did not show up. Those five children were driven home in a car of the Palestinian Ministry of Education. Their worried parents were waiting for them.

Hala says she is not angry at her son. She only asked him not to cry the next time he is arrested by soldiers. "We are used to it," she says, adding that her son had a dream about the arrest that night.

The IDF Spokesman's Office provided the following statement in response to a query from Haaretz: "Last Wednesday, March 20, 2013, Palestinian minors threw stones at a force that was manning the checkpoint in Hebron. An IDF force that waited in ambush close to the site caught the stone-throwers in action. The Palestinian minors were detained on the spot, and seven of them, who are above the age of 12, were taken for interrogation by the Israel Police. As the Israel Police interrogated the minors, the question about the non-presence of a parent/lawyer during the interrogation should be addressed to them."

The day after the incident, Ahmed did not want to go to school, but was persuaded by his parents to do so. For one day he was a hero among the children: Ahmed, the released detainee. He did not enter the classroom that day, staying instead in the principal's office. He wants to be a doctor when he grows up, like a few others in his extended family, he tells us. His mother says he is a good student and a good boy.

Ahmed has seven brothers and sisters. The five boys sleep in one room, on two beds and on mattresses on the floor. There is an old computer in the room, which is turned off; they do not have an Internet connection. Out in the street a young peddler, of the same age as Ahmed, can be heard hawking his wares. After school the boy sells halabi, a sweet homemade pastry oozing with oil, for half a shekel.

It has been many years since last I saw a mourners' pavilion in the territories as large and as busy as the one for Arafat Jaradat, a previously obscure gas-station attendant from the town of Sa'ir. He was 30 years old, with two children; his wife is four months' pregnant. Jaradat was suspected of having thrown stones and a Molotov cocktail at Israeli forces and was arrested. He died last weekend after six days of detention and interrogation in an Israeli prison, and his death has become a national symbol.

That's how it is when someone dies in prison in unclear circumstances; that's how it is when the West Bank is on the verge of boiling over because of the problem of the prisoners. A wretched death, with equally wretched timing. And in the gigantic tent set up this week across from the gas station where he worked, people are in tumult in a way they haven't been for a long time. Armed men were firing into the air as nationalist songs and fiery speeches came over the loudspeakers; the tent is adorned with innumerable colorful memorial posters from student unions, a sweet shop in Hebron, political organizations and the Red Crescent in Sa'ir.

Amid the posters sit hundreds of people who came to offer them condolences, all of them men, delegation after delegation, from throughout the West Bank. Here comes MK Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash ), who is greeted with great respect and delivers a pointed and determined speech: "I am standing here before you and telling you in all responsibility: Arafat Jaradat's death was a result of torture. Israel cannot shrug off the responsibility for his blood."

And the large crowd listens in silence. There is mourning in Sa'ir, but also in nearby Hebron: National flags flutter at half mast on the roof of King Hussein High School, in memory of the deceased. The almond trees are in blossom now beside the road going up to Sa'ir.

We enter the mourners' tent and we, the Israelis, are also greeted with respect, with bitter coffee and a date. We search in vain for a quiet corner in the depths of the tent to hear from family members and friends reminiscences about the character of the deceased and details about the foggy circumstances of his death.

His father, Shalish Jaradat, in a traditional robe and headdress, is too stunned to speak. His eldest son, Mohammed, tries to stop crying and tell us his brother's story. After we talk for a time, he says: "Look how tense I am after this conversation, so you can imagine what my brother went through in the interrogations."

Mohammed was with his brother on the night he was arrested. The next time he saw him, a week later, was in the morgue at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, moments before the autopsy. The final results of the examination had not yet been received on Tuesday, at the time of our visit to Sa'ir, nor by press time yesterday. Mohammed and his elderly father were permitted to come to the morgue; at the sight of Arafat's corpse, both men collapsed. Mohammed remembers only that he saw blue bruises on his brother's forehead and legs, swelling in his wrists (apparently from handcuffs ) and signs of blood in his nose. They were told that his ribs were also broken.

The Palestinian pathologist who participated in the autopsy told the family members that he had no doubt that Arafat Jaradat did not die as a result of a heart attack, as Israel had tried to claim.

In Sa'ir this week, they asked why a detainee who was suspected of the relatively minor offense of throwing stones during the course of Operation Pillar of Defense, in November, was taken from his home in the middle of the night a few months after he committed the offense - straight to a Shin Bet security service interrogation facility at Jalameh.

Is it possible that a person suspected of a relatively minor offense was tortured to death under interrogation? Did he really die in the solitary confinement cell at Megiddo Prison, or had he been transferred there after his death in Jalameh in order to blur the fact that he had died under interrogation, as his family suspects? There are even those in Sa'ir who are convinced Israel wanted to kill him.

The last person to see Jaradat alive, apart from his interrogators and jailers, was attorney Kamil Sabbagh of Nazareth, from the public defender's office. He met his client for the first time in the Samaria Military Court in Jalameh on Thursday, February 21, two days before he died.

Broken spirit

"The fellow came in - doubled over, scared, confused and shrunken," Sabbagh told us this week. "The judge gave us two minutes to talk. He told me he suffered from back pain that had been exacerbated by prolonged sitting on a chair with his hands tied behind his back during his interrogation."

Jaradat's physical and psychological condition looked to Sabbagh like serious cause for concern, and he requested that the judge have him examined by a doctor. The judge indeed ordered such an examination, but it is not clear if it actually took place and what its findings were. The prosecution asked to have Jaradat's remand extended for 15 days - thereby indicating the investigation was far from over - and the judge approved another 12 days of detention and interrogations.

This apparently broke Jaradat's spirit. He thought about his pregnant wife and his children. He begged his lawyer to do something to get him released and the lawyer explained to him that this was not within his power. According to Sabbagh, the fact of his transfer to Megiddo Prison on that same day or the next day, even though the investigation had not yet been completed, indicates he had been passed along to stool pigeons. Usually only people whose interrogations have been completed or who are at the stage of being sent on to informers get transferred to Megiddo.

Israel claims Jaradat was "resting" in his cell, but Sabbagh emphasizes that there is never rest in detention, in those conditions . In his interrogation, Jaradat apparently admitted to having thrown stones, but did not admit to having thrown Molotov cocktails.

Sabbagh explains that a suspect coming into the Shin Bet interrogation rooms is like someone who comes to the doctor with a broken pinky and is immediately taken in for comprehensive examination of his entire body.

The lawyer has no idea what else Jaradat was questioned about, beyond the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails. By the same token he finds it difficult to imagine what caused his death. On Saturday evening, after he heard about his client's death, Sabbagh drove to Megiddo Prison, but the security officer who came out to meet him did not provide any details.

Jaradat was arrested on the night of February 18. It was a bit after midnight and everyone in the house - he himself, his wife Dalal, his 4-year-old daughter Ya'ara and 2-year-old son Mohammed - was sleeping, as was his brother Mohammed, who lives in the same building. The soldiers, 10 or 12 of them, burst into the home and behaved with rare courtesy. They asked for identity cards and when Arafat gave them his, they told him to say goodbye to his family and come with them for detention. His small children, Ya'ara and Mohammed, clung to his legs but the soldiers promised them their father would be home soon.

Jaradat wasn't very experienced in matters of detention. About a decade ago he was arrested once, for a day. He was also wounded once by a rubber bullet. At the time, Musa Abu Hashash, a field researcher for B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Territories recorded his testimony, which to this day is kept in the organization's archive.

Jaradat was a strong and athletic young man who, according to his family, had never been ill a day in his life; he was a third-year political science student at the Al-Quds Open University, who loved to play soccer and basketball and earned his living pumping gas at his uncle's filling station. He did not resist arrest. He was wearing a sweat suit as the soldiers accompanied him out of the house; the neighbors relate that after they had gone only a few dozen meters, the soldiers began beating him and his screams were clearly heard.

The next day his family tried to find out where he had been taken. From Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, they learned he was under interrogation by the Shin Bet at Jalameh. They had no alternative but to wait. Last Saturday afternoon, Arafat's brother Mohammed saw a news flash on Palestinian television: A Palestinian detainee had died in an Israeli prison. He didn't imagine this was his brother.

A little while later the name Arafat Jaradat was reported, too, though at that time they were still saying on TV that he was from Jenin. By now the family was exceedingly worried. People began to gather in their home. A relative, Fathi Jaradat, relates that his son who works for the TV network looked into it and found that it was indeed their Arafat, but he refrained from telling this to the family.

After 6 P.M., the truth became clear, and the deceased's mother and his wife began screaming and were taken to a local clinic. No one bothered to inform them officially of what had happened to Jaradat - not the Israel Prison Service, not the Israel Defense Forces nor any other Israeli authority.

The next day a number of family members went to Abu Kabir and in the evening received Arafat's body at the Tarqumiya roadblock. It was taken to Al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron, until the mass funeral held the following day in Sa'ir, with the participation of about 15,000 people.

A nationalist song is now coming over the deafening loudspeakers in the mourners' tent: "The Palestinian people have the power to topple boulders." Photographs of Jaradat, a handsome young man wearing a shirt and tie, look down from every poster. In most of them his portrait is accompanied by portraits of two other men: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the late Yasser Arafat. A handful of women are standing on the roof of the gas station where Jaradat had worked, and peer in from there at what is happening; his two small children are asleep at home.

After that we went to visit his grave. In the center of the town there are two small areas constituting the cemetery for shuhada, martyrs. Jaradat was interred in the center of one of them, which is closed off behind an iron gate. A concrete surface has already been poured over the grave as though to make impossible exhumation of his body, which has taken the secret of his death with it to this grave, on which five wreaths of flowers lay. They had already begun to wither a day after the funeral.

Only the remains of a cream cake on the kitchen table and a few fluttering flags on the roof are testimony to the happy atmosphere in this home. However, the joy over Bassam Tamimi’s release from prison this week was considerably dampened by the grief over the death of his brother-in-law, Rushdi Tamimi. Rushdi, 31, died three months ago when Israel Defense Forces soldiers fired 80 live rounds at him − without any justification, according to a subsequent IDF investigation.

The first thing Bassam did after his release was to visit Rushdi’s grave. Bassam’s cousin, Mustafa Tamimi, was killed over a year ago, also by IDF gunfire. And soldiers did not hesitate to fire tear-gas canisters at his funeral, which I attended.

Bassam’s sister, Bassama, was killed 10 years ago when she went to the military court in Ramallah, where Bassam was being remanded in custody. An army interpreter allegedly pushed her down a staircase; as a result, she broke her neck and died, leaving five young children behind.

Photographs of the three hang in the family’s living room in Nabi Saleh, a determined village that is part of the popular Palestinian uprising. Bassam Tamimi, the leader of the uprising, was released this week after his ninth incarceration in an Israeli prison. The latest spell behind bars came after he participated in a nonviolent demonstration calling for the boycotting of Israeli products, held at the entrance to the Rami Levi supermarket in the Geva Binyamin industrial zone, southeast of Ramallah.

This four-month sentence can be added to the other four years Tamimi has previously spent in Israeli prisons. In a poster that reads “Free Bassam Tamimi,” also hanging on one of the living room walls, there is no date. His wife, Nariman, explains that the absence of a date has enabled the poster to be used all the times he has been arrested. She herself has been arrested four times.

For several years, Bassam, 45, has been trying to complete his requirements for a Master’s degree in economics. The problem is that, whenever he makes a little progress toward finishing the requirements, he is arrested and sent to prison. Now he is determined to get a Ph.D.

His village, in the Ramallah district, began its struggle in 2009, on the anniversary of the first intifada 22 years before. Tamimi and his friends from the village, as well as international and Israeli activists, wanted to return to the days of that first intifada, to protest the expulsion of villagers from Nabi Saleh’s well by settlers from the nearby settlement of Halamish ‏(previously called Neve Tzuf‏).

Since that time, though, Tamimi has changed his outlook. Whereas previously he supported the two-states-for-two-nations idea, he is now fighting for the concept of a single state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

This week, the day after his release from prison, Bassam explained his new worldview: “The seizure of the well is only a manifestation of the problem, not the problem itself. The same can be said about the checkpoints, the settlements, the theft of Palestinian lands and the arrests. The real problem is the occupation.

“When the village of Budros succeeded in changing the route of the separation fence, this was a minor victory. The problem is the separation fence, not its route. The problem is not the settlers’ attacks, but rather the settlements themselves. The problem is the occupation, not its various manifestations.

“When a representative of the American consulate visited here a short while after we began our struggle,” he adds, “I told her: ‘Let us say you were Wonder Woman and you could, simply with a toss of your head, make Halamish disappear. Would you solve the problem? Just look around you, at the settlements.’ We believe that our fate is not the occupation but rather the resistance.

“Israel has killed the two-state solution. That is why we must adopt a new strategy, and find a new partner for that strategy in Israeli society. We must kill the occupation and the [sense of] separation in the Israeli consciousness: The separation of people from one another is a question of consciousness. We must never return to this failed pattern of thinking. The future will not change if we continue to think with the same concepts of the past. The solution is a single state. If we believe we have a right to this land and the Israelis believe they are the ones who have a right to this land, we must build a new model. If both of us believe that God gave us this land, we must put history aside and begin to think about the future in different terms.

“I began to be active in the Fatah movement, which means that I supported its ideas,” Bassam says. “For me, as someone who never worked in Israel, the Israeli was the soldier who is shooting, the soldier who is at the checkpoint, or the investigator in prison who caused me to lose consciousness for ten days and to suffer partial paralysis in 1993 after he used considerable physical force while rocking my body during my interrogation. For me, the Israeli was the woman who killed my sister. This was the image of the Israeli in my view, and it made me hate Israelis.

“However, when we began the popular uprising, I met other Israelis, people who believed that I have a right to this land, people who were partners and true cousins. This strengthened my belief that we can learn how to live together. I have no problem in suggesting to Jonathan Pollak [one of the anarchist leaders opposing the separation fence] that he build his house on my roof. But I cannot tolerate the idea that the settlers have settled on my land. My consciousness has changed and it has taken me to the one-state solution, which means the acceptance − not the removal − of the Other. In the past I wanted all of this land without any Israelis. Today, I also accept the Israelis. If we can all change our consciousness, we can create a just country.

“This is hard, I know,” Bassam admits. “Israel wants to kill that idea as well. It wants to build a wall against it, which means that they do not want us. They are returning to the old idea of the desolate land. But we are here and we will continue with our resistance.”

Tamimi’s daughter listens to our conversation. Ahed is a beautiful, blonde-haired young girl of 11 who made her worldwide media debut a few weeks ago when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited her to visit Turkey, together with her mother. A large, elegant album with chrome paper pages − a gift from the Turkish government − displays breathtaking photos from the visit of Ahed and her mother, a visit that was given extensive media coverage. On returning from Turkey, Ahed told her father that, when Erdogan suggested she accompany him on a visit to a refugee camp for Syrian refugees, she turned down the offer. She told the Turkish prime minister that her heart already had enough pain.

A unique case

Bassam Tamimi’s latest sentence came after he saw Israeli police officers attempting to arrest his wife Nariman at the Rami Levi demo, and he ran over in order to free her. The judge at his trial, Maj. Meir Vigisser, wrote: “The accused participated in a demonstration that was declared illegal, and fought with Chief Inspector [Benny] Malka in an attempt to free his wife. In his actions, he was guilty of assaulting a police officer. The case we are dealing with here is unique to a great extent ... It does not appear that he intended to enter into a confrontation with the police. A few seconds beforehand, he was seen standing alongside his wife and Chief Inspector Malka and appeared to be in a relaxed mood.”

The Ofer military court in the West Bank sentenced him to four months in prison, a fine of NIS 5,000 and a suspended sentence that will be activated if he dares to participate in “any procession for which no permit has been issued, or in any gathering attended by more than 50 persons.” I ask Bassam what he has gained through his struggle? “The occupation,” he responds, “is still here and is present in every aspect of our lives, so it could be said that we have not attained anything tangible. However, on the other hand, our message is being heard throughout the world. Part of our success is the fact that you two came today to hear what I have to say. And the fact that our children now have more courage to talk about their fate. And the fact that we can correct the negative image of Palestinians in a segment of the international community. And the fact that people in Turkey saw Ahed and heard her speak. But our main target is Israeli society, and there we have made very little headway. Israeli society is moving further to the right and that is the reason why it is hard to believe that we are getting closer to something substantial. Israel is pushing us back to the idea of the armed struggle in order to again spread the lie that we are terrorists. This worries me very much.

“I am also afraid of [Habayit Hayehudi leader] Naftali Bennett’s plan. He wants Israel to annex all of Area C.”

‏(In accordance with the Oslo II Accords [Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip], signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1995, Judea and Samaria is divided into three sections: A, B and C: Area A, which includes most of the large Palestinian population centers, is mostly under Palestinian Authority ‏(PA‏) civil and security control; Area B is mostly under PA civil control and Israeli security control; and Area C is mostly under Israeli security and civil control, although the PA has authority in civil matters not related to land.‏)

‘Everything is interconnected’

“That means apartheid,” Tamimi continues. “This is Israel’s plan: to banish the Palestinians from all of Area C. For instance, my home is located in Area C and a demolition order has been issued against my home. Yes, you are now in Area C and you can feel secure because here Israel is responsible for security. Some of the houses in this village are in Area C. Half of my cousin’s house is located in Area B and the other half is located in Area C. Thirteen demolition orders have been issued against houses in this village. I have a building permit for part of my house from the Jordanian government; it was issued in 1964.

“The Israelis have issued a demolition order for 300 square meters of my house, although my house measures only 200 square meters. Perhaps I can borrow 100 square meters from Halamish. Although perhaps they will not demolish my house, they have managed to scare me so much that I have decided not to add another floor. In other words, four of my children will have to move to Areas A and B. This is the quiet population transfer. This is ‘gentle’ genocide, where no one is killed. The next generation will leave Area C and only the elderly will remain. Perhaps they will be given Israeli identity cards, but that will be apartheid.

“Because it is for the most part Zionist, the Israeli left wants to change the Palestinian consciousness and adapt it to the Israeli left’s consciousness. It is not prepared to accept our right to our consciousness. The Israeli left wants to change us. It wants to make life easier for us under the occupation, but does not really want to put it to an end. After all, ever since the Oslo era, the total area of land that the Israelis have taken from the Palestinians is five times the area of land that they took before Oslo. However, when I see who comes here every Friday in order to demonstrate with us and to support us in our struggle, I believe that we do have a partner for changing the situation.

“The two-state solution is not just. Jewish holy sites are located in the West Bank. My children love to go to the beach, which is located in Israeli territory. I love to stroll in Jaffa and Acre, which are both located in Israel. Most of Israel’s water is in the West Bank. A large portion of Israel’s revenue comes from tourism, and part of the Palestinian economy is entitled to be based on tourism. Everything is interconnected. I do not want to deny anyone these rights. I want a solution for everyone. I know that such a thing has not always worked out in every place, but the world is moving toward the elimination of all borders and toward economic union.”