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.”

Secretary of State John Kerry is making an all-out effort to restart peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Many well-intentioned, highly intelligent people from around the world have engaged in some way, shape, or form in the Palestinian-Israeli issue and many of these people have had hands-on experience in resolving other longstanding, global issues, like those of Ireland, South Africa, and U.S. civil rights. While there is always a great deal to learn from other global experiences, the case of Palestine is different and unless Secretary Kerry recognizes this, all the efforts and millions of dollars being thrown at this conflict will be in vain, as will the latest U.S. negotiations blitz.

Three issues related to this conflict that are crucial to understand are: historic guilt, colonial responsibility, and the U.S. “special relationship” with Israel.

Today’s global powers bear a tremendous amount of historic guilt, not only, as is popularly believed, for the anti-Semitism their ancestors practiced against Jews. This was very real throughout the 19th and 20th centuries – and earlier – and it was rampant in mainly white, Christian European places like Germany, Poland, France, Austria, and, yes, even in the U.S.

But these countries should also understand their historic responsibility for making the Palestinians pay for European and American crimes. Their guilt vis-à-vis Jews has hobbled their objectivity and skewed their capacity to see the acts of Israel for what they have been, and continue to be: crimes against humanity.

Long before the Holocaust, the political ideology of Zionism charted a path towards ethnically cleansing Palestine from its native Muslim and Christian Palestinian population, aiming to create what was dubbed a “Jewish State.” This colossal, historic injustice of dispossessing Palestinians is no longer a point of contention: even Israeli historians have meticulously documented this fact.

Furthermore, many of those same global powers, led by the U.S., were born out of a colonial history that displaced indigenous populations. As such, these powers see the Israeli enterprise as very similar to their own and find it difficult to hold Israel accountable for fear that this will then boomerang on them.

Thus, instead of seeing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for what it really is – ongoing colonialism – these powers prefer to frame the conflict as one in which the parties have equally valid, competing narratives that require a partition of the land. And meanwhile, as they remain transfixed on this outdated partition paradigm, they can offer no explanation as to why their respective governments allowed the reality on the ground to gradually render this solution unfeasible.

Ever since the New York Times headline of May 14, 1948 - “ZIONISTS PROCLAIM NEW STATE OF ISRAEL” – the U.S. has taken sides in this conflict, arming, funding, diplomatically covering for, and politically and militarily planning with Israel in its determination (always camouflaged in euphemisms) to ethnically cleanse Palestine.

Israel worked hard to cast the U.S. support in cement. Israeli leaders understood very well the inherent weaknesses of an open political system and wasted no time in creating a pro-Israel lobby that transformed what is supposed to be a foreign affairs issue into a U.S. domestic issue. Israel’s domestication of the U.S. political scene – courtesy of American proxies – is alive and well today; just ask newly appointed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

U.S. president Barack Obama epitomizes this reality. During his recent trip to Israel, he visited the Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum) to declare that Israel’s future existence and security as a “strong Jewish state” would ensure that there will never be another holocaust.

What did he mean? Was the idea to imply that if Israel, as a “Jewish state,” ceased to exist (like other states with a racially-based raison d’etre, such as the U.S. prior to the Civil War or South Africa during its Apartheid era), then Jews in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, would be slaughtered?!

Adding insult to injury, Obama then did a huge favor to Israel’s right wing by going outside official protocol to lay a wreath on the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the political ideology of Zionism.

Through his actions, intentionally or otherwise, Obama gave credence to the ‘right’ of a Jewish state in Palestine, while ignoring the indigenous people of Palestine – including Christians, Muslims and even some Jews – upon whose ruins the Israeli state was built. Palestinians are still struggling for survival in the face of an ethnic cleansing campaign that began more than 65 years ago and is still going on.

Indeed, Palestine is different, really different. A more basic and more relevant issue than artificial partition is still waiting to be seriously addressed: Is Israel to be a state of all its citizens—Jewish and non-Jewish—or not? The answer to this question goes to the heart of Zionism’s racially-based enterprise and opens the way to a historic reconciliation and a homecoming of Palestinian refugees to what is today called Israel.

A leaflet was distributed early this week in Nablus calling for a halt to the security collaboration with Israel in the West Bank. That very day, the Palestinian Preventive Security agency arrested a key activist of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was behind the leaflet. The man was released within a few hours, but an acquaintance who visited him related that the signs of the beating he received were still visible on his body.

It’s likely that the arrest and beating will be part of the statistics contained in next year’s report of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights ‏(ICHR‏). They will be contained under the rubrics of “Violations of the right to personal security and physical safety, especially in the form of torture and ill treatment ‏(during detention‏)” and “Violations of the right to freedom of expression.”

The report for 2012, published on Tuesday, states that last year, the ICHR documented 306 violations in the category of torture and ill-treatment − 172 in the West Bank and 134 in the Gaza Strip. This is a considerable increase over 2011, when 214 cases of ill-treatment and abuse of persons in detention were recorded. The past year saw an increase of 10 percent in the overall number of complaints by residents of the Palestinian Authority regarding violations of their rights by the authorities − 3,185 ‏(of them, 812 in the Gaza Strip‏) in 2012, as compared to 2,876 (831 in Gaza).

However, there were actually more complaints in 2010 (‏3,828‏). Thus, the numerical oscillations do not necessarily reflect a change for the worse or for the better in the number of human-rights violations in practice, only in the number of complainants who were persuaded that they had nothing to fear and must not remain silent.

The report − with its litany of abuses and its monitoring of the wrongs that were righted and those that are continuing to be perpetrated − was distributed Tuesday to dozens of invitees to the ICHR’s public assembly, held in the Movenpick Hotel in Ramallah. Those in attendance included cabinet ministers, the prosecutor general, representatives of the bureau of President Mahmoud Abbas, senior figures in the security forces and district governors.

These gatherings have created a tradition of speaking truth to power – albeit weak and subordinate to Israel. This is the 18th report issued by the ICHR since the commission was founded by presidential order of Yasser Arafat in 1993, making it a state institution. Its role is to demand that the official bodies − civil and security alike − uphold the rule of law and fulfill their obligations to the Palestinian citizens, and maintain their human rights.

Governments have come and gone, one president has died and another was elected to succeed him, prime ministers have resigned, an intifada broke out, Israeli military attacks followed one another in rapid succession, Gaza disengaged from the West Bank − but the ICHR has pursued its goal unwaveringly. It records complaints, takes up matters with local authorities, monitors developments, deters, petitions the courts and submits reports ‏(first to the PA president, then to the prime minister and afterward to the public‏).

Underlying the rigid ceremoniousness of the ICHR and its evolution into an organized bureaucracy with its own routine is a clear philosophy: conditions of foreign rule and military assaults must not be used as excuses to cheapen human life and infringe upon people’s rights.

Death tops the list

The report contains a list of 140 Palestinians who were killed in 2012 under unnatural circumstances ‏(and not by the Israeli army or in road accidents‏). Among the causes of death were the collapse of a tunnel in Rafah, home accidents, medical negligence, murder at the hands of unknown assailants, and brawls between families. The ICHR insists that the authorities examine and investigate every case of unnatural death. Each instance is elaborated: “investigative file opened,” “no examination made,” “no details made available,” “no results.”

Topping the list of violations is death: Eleven Palestinians died in detention facilities, two in the West Bank and nine in Gaza ‏(of whom seven were accused of collaborating with Israel and were murdered by unknown armed attackers‏). In Gaza, six convicted persons who were condemned to death were executed contrary to a law which requires the president to sign the death sentence. The courts in the West Bank have stopped handing down the death penalty, but the recommendation/demand by the ICHR to erase the death penalty from the penalty code has not yet been adopted. The most widespread infringement of rights − or, at least, the one most reported − is that of the right to due process ‏(789 complaints − 563 in the West Bank, 226 in the Strip‏).

This is followed, in descending order, by violation of the right to hold a position in the public service; the right to fair treatment by the authorities; the right to physical safety and security while in detention; rights of the incapacitated; the right to social security; failure to obey court orders; prevention of access to official documents; prevention of access to state judicial services; infringement of the work of the legislative council; and infringement of freedom of association and freedom of expression.

Of the complaints, 459 were lodged by women or in the name of women. These deal mainly with violation of the right to hold a job: Both in Gaza and the West Bank, the governments dismissed female teachers who were identified with the rival political stream.

There were 226 complaints by children or made in the name of children − against being placed in detention instead of in educational and corrective institutions, and against failure to protect them from exploitation and abuse.

The 325 complaints against the Preventive Security agency in the West Bank constituted the largest number of complaints against one body. Most were about torture, followed by unlawful conditions of detention and interrogation; prevention of family visits; prevention of medical treatment; and home searches without a proper warrant.

Of these cases, 212 were closed: Satisfactory results were obtained in 100 cases, unsatisfactory results in 42 cases, 23 cases were not responded to by Preventive Security, and 47 cases were not pursued at the request of the complainant. There were 106 complaints against the Gaza Strip’s equivalent of Preventive Security, known as Internal Security and subordinate to the Interior Ministry.

In 2012, 1,474 of the cases dealt with by the ICHR were closed, 46 percent (678‏) satisfactorily ‏(as compared with 36 percent in 2011‏). With regard to complaints of torture and cruel treatment of individuals in detention, the authorities, both in Gaza and the West Bank, have one response: They deny the allegations. The report’s authors note this fact, though the wording they use intimates that they do not accept the denials as the last word.

On the civil side, the bodies against which most complaints were made were the Social Affairs Ministry (310) and the Education and Higher Education Ministry (237) both in the West Bank.

Many of the violations are the result of the Palestinians’ 2007 political split into two governments. This development also added an unwritten and unforeseen task for the ICHR. The commission has become the major state body that operates both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, and implements one policy under one administration. It’s true that the Palestinian Water Authority is also continuing, under one administration, to fulfill its thankless task of trying to develop the water and sewage infrastructures − not only in the West Bank but in the Gaza Strip as well. Apart from that, the Palestinians have two prime ministers, two education ministers, two interior ministers, two separate judicial systems, two competing state news agencies, and so on.

The Hamas authorities in Gaza have no reason to object to the presence of the Ramallah-based water authority, as only in this way will the donations and funds continue to arrive that will enable services to be provided in this near-disaster area. ‏(More than 95 percent of the water pumped in the Gaza Strip aquifer is not fit for drinking and must undergo prior treatment.‏)

In contrast, the ICHR does not provide services or money, but comes only with allegations and demands. Two years ago, Hamas threatened to shut down the ICHR offices in Gaza, claiming that in the intra-Palestinian conflict, the commission is on the side of the PA. This ignored the fact that in the West Bank, the ICHR is in the forefront of those protecting the rights of Hamas people who are arrested without trial, or are fired from their jobs, or cannot find work because of their political allegiance.

The Hamas government intended to establish a human-rights commission of its own. A great many conversations and visits by senior ICHR personnel to Gaza were needed in order to persuade Hamas that the commission is impartial in the internal conflict, and in order to dissuade it from creating yet another institutional duality. Indeed, by its sheer existence and in the wake of the work it does, the ICHR has become the leading institution that’s trying to put a stop to the tectonic drifting apart of the Palestinian society in Gaza and the society in the West Bank.

Since the beginning of 2013, Israel has forbidden tourists from the United States and other countries to enter the territories under Palestinian Authority control without a military entry permit – but it has not explained the application process to them.

Haaretz has learned of a recent case where clerics from the United States had to sign a declaration at the Ben-Gurion International Airport, promising not to enter Area A without permits from the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories.

The clerics signed the declaration, but representatives of the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority did not explain to them how to get the permits.

Not every tourist who is planning to visit the West Bank is required to sign the declaration, and no criteria have been published for how people are selected to do so.

The American clerics, who spoke with Haaretz on condition of anonymity, were sent by their church to work with Christian communities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. As a result of the declaration they signed and their inability to decipher the procedure for obtaining the permit, they have been unable to meet with the members of Christian communities in West Bank cities or visit holy places, like the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

One of the signers, who turned to the United States Consulate in Jerusalem for help, told Haaretz that the consulate employees are unaware of the existence of the declaration.

The text of the English-language version of the document reads:

"1. I understand that this permit is granted me for entry and visitation within Israel only, and it has been explained to me that I am unable to enter the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority without advance authorization from the Territory Actions Coordinator and I agree to act in accordance with these regulations.

"2. I understand that in the event that I enter any area under the control of the Palestinian Authority without the appropriate authorization all relevant legal actions will be taken against me, including deportation and denial of entry into Israel for a period of up to ten years."

In the Hebrew version, there is also a clear statement that unauthorized entry to the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority is a transgression of the law. This is omitted from the English version.

The English version does not use the official and common English title "Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories," but translates the Hebrew as “Territory Actions Coordinator,” raising doubts as to whether the coordinator’s office has seen the form.

The spokeswoman for the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority, Sabine Haddad, wrote to Haaretz that the Entry into Israel Law authorizes the interior minister to decide on the entry of foreigners to the State of Israel, but in the case of Judea and Samaria, the Israel Defense Forces chief of general staff makes the determination – with a permit from the coordinator’s office required by security legislation.

“When a tourist/foreign national arrives at the international border crossings and it is believed that he wants to enter Judea and Samaria, he should be informed [of the procedure] and asked for his promise to receive a permit from the coordinator’s office before his entry – a permit that constitutes an essential condition [of entry to the Palestinian Authority controlled areas]," said Haddad.

Haddad did not reply to Haaretz's request for explanation of the pertinent clauses of the law, nor did she provide Haaretz with information about the department in the coordinator's office from which to request the permit. On the English website of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories – a military unit that carries out and implements civilian policy in the territories – including the part dealing with ties with international organizations, there is no mention of the existence of such a procedure. In reply to an inquiry by Haaretz, the spokesman for the coordinator's office said the matter of the procedure and the form is being examined.

About seven years ago, there was a report of a similar declaration that tourists were required to sign, but the practice was discontinued and renewed only at the beginning of this year. Several years ago, the Interior Ministry also began to limit the freedom of movement of tourists with work and family ties in the West Bank and to prevent their entry into Israel by means of a permit with the stamp "For the territories of Judea and Samaria only.”

Attorney Adi Lustigman turned Haaretz’s attention to a legal decision from August 2010 by Jerusalem District Court Judge Moshe Yoed Hacohen, which dealt with the appeal she filed against preventing the entry into Israel of an American citizen. Hacohen ruled that even according to the Oslo Accords, which the Interior Ministry occasionally relies on to explain restrictions on the movement of tourists, citizens of countries that have diplomatic ties with Israel need only an entry permit for Israel and a valid passport to enter Palestinian Authority territories. They are not required to have visiting permits from the Palestinian Authority, which are granted with the approval of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (as is required of citizens of countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel, and citizens from Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan).

Lustigman believes the policy behind the declaration is illegal because it discriminates between foreign citizens whose destination is the settlements and those whose destination is Palestinian areas. The form itself, Lustigman says, "is not legal because it was formulated for an improper purpose – isolating the occupied territories – and in an improper manner. It makes the assumption that people who arrive in Israel as tourists, as clerics and for other purposes want to act in contradiction to the law, which may not even have been explained to them clearly.

"There is no reason to threaten foreign citizens, to turn them into suspects and to make them sign, as a condition for entering Israel, a form whose wording and content are unclear … If there really is such a procedure, it should be publicized in a simple, clear and accessible manner, and instead of handing out a threatening sheet of paper, they should hand out a paper containing an explanation and procedures for making the request. Because the Interior Ministry does not do so, and as far as I know neither does the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, it seems that there is no operative procedure, nor any procedure for submitting a request. We are left only with a prohibition, which, as we have mentioned, is invalid."

The spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate did not answer Haaretz's question as to whether Israel has informed the American authorities about the restriction and the obligation to sign, and did not explain the viewpoint of the U.S. Department of State on the issue.

An East Jerusalem resident who is requesting permission to appeal the eviction of his family from their home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah claims that the police are harassing him and that he was even arrested on false charges.

He says that the harassment is meant to dissuade him from continuing his struggle against the eviction order, which is being actively supported by left-wing activists. A police spokesperson rejected his claims.

Ayoob and Fahima Shamasna, a couple in their 70s, live together with their son Mohammed, his wife and their six children in a small apartment that, prior to 1948, belonged to a Jew named Haim Ben Sulimani. The property, like other properties and plots in the neighborhood, was placed in the jurisdiction of the office of the Jordanian custodian general for absentee property and, after 1967, in the jurisdiction of the office of the Custodian General, to which the Shamasna family paid a monthly rental fee. Eight years ago, Sulimani’s heirs; Shoshana Tzarom, Ashira Bibi, Haim Tawil, Miriam Elkayam, and Eliezer Aricha requested that the Custodian General would release the property and transfer it to them.

In this case, as in other similar cases in the neighborhood, right-wing organizations are involved. They locate the heirs of the properties, rent or purchase them and then populate them with Jewish families. Twice the courts ordered the Shamasna family to vacate the apartment: Once on May 2012, a verdict was handed down by Magistrate Court Judge Anna Schneider and, once on December 2012, a similar verdict was given by Jerusalem District Court Judges Yoram Noam, Carmi Mussak and Moshe Bar-Am.

The Shamasna family, represented by their attorney, Mohand Jabara, petitioned the High Court of Justice to appeal the eviction order. The High Court received two contradictory responses from the Custodian General. The first, through lawyer Tova Frisch, was that the Custodian General is not managing the property and is therefore has nothing to do with the case. The second response, also made on behalf of the Custodian General, this time through the law firm of Yizhak Mina & Co. Advocates, was that the Shamasna family’s appeal be thrown out. Because of the contradictory nature of the two responses, High Court Justice Edna Arbel decided that the court will hold a hearing to review the petition in May.

Mohammed Shamasna, a gardener, told Haaretz that in addition to the legal proceedings he is facing, the police began taking great interest in his affairs. He recounted that three weeks ago a police officer – whose name he did not ask for – was waiting for him by the entrance to his home. The police officer, Shamasna said, advised him that his family should vacate the premises and that he should sever his ties with leftist activists, who have protesting with him in front of his home. Shamasna said that the police officer told him: “At the end of the day, they are going back to their homes and you will be left with your problems and with the fines you will have to pay.” In addition, Shamashna claimed, the police officer suggested that he meet with rightwing activist Aryeh King, who was helping Sulimani’s heirs with their litigation and that he should reach a settlement with King.

A few days later, Shamasna was summoned to a meeting with a man named Erez, who said he was responsible for security in Sheikh Jarrah. At the meeting, which took place in the police station on Saladin Street in East Jerusalem, Erez expressed his view that the Jewish heirs were the rightful owners of the land in Sheikh Jarrah and that they were justified in their demand to reclaim their property. According to Shamasna, Erez did not respond when Shamasna asked him, “In that case, aren’t the [former Palestinian] residents of [the Jerusalem neighborhood of] Lifta not justified in demanding that they be allowed to return to their homes?”

Two weeks ago, Shamasna was arrested at the Hizma checkpoint, separating Jerusalem from the West Bank, by Border Police officers, who informed him that he was being detained and that he must await the arrival of a police patrol car. An hour later, the patrol car arrived and Shamasna was told that he was under arrest on suspicion of plotting to commit a crime. He police refused to answer his questions as to the nature of the crime he was accused of or the names of the people with which he allegedly plotted to commit it.

He was scheduled to appear before a judge the next morning for an extension of his arrest but instead the police prosecutor instructed him to fill out a document stating that he was being detained for 24 hours and then be released. Shamasna said he preferred to appear before the judge so that he could hear what charges led to his arrest.

A spokesperson for the Israel Police, Chief Superintendent Shmulik Ben Rubi, has stated in response to Shamasna’s story that these are “totally baseless claims made by someone who has broken the law on several occasions and who is now requesting the protection of various persons for his actions. The complainant resides with his family in a home that he does not own, as noted in a court verdict; he was supposed to have vacated that home a month and a half ago but has so far failed to do so.

Moreover, the complainant has even recruited the residents of his neighborhood to participate in protest demonstrations and in unlawful assemblies in the neighborhood in the hope that these activities will help him to avoid complying with the court’s verdict. In addition, he was summoned for interrogation purposes to the Moriah Police Precinct in Jerusalem following the receipt of intelligence information about a house break-in. He was interrogated and then released; the investigation against him is still in progress.” It should be pointed out here that a court injunction allows the family to continue to reside in their apartment until their request for an appeal is deliberated by the High Court of Justice.

The Palestinian security prisoners incarcerated in Hadarim Prison in Even Yehuda recently had the opportunity to watch the Oscar-nominated documentary “5 Broken Cameras,” about the protests against the separation fence in the West Bank town of Bil'in, not once but twice: on Israel's Channel 2 as well as on the Palestinian television station.

One of those prisoners did in fact watch the movie on both channels. Walid Daqa a 52-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel from Baaqa al-Gharbiyeh, followed, somewhat amused, the discussion over whether the documentary – which was co-directed by an Israeli and a Palestinian and criticized by Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat as slandering Israel – qualified as an Israeli or Palestinian. But most of all, he was interested in the reactions of his fellow prisoners, as he wrote in a letter to his friend Anat Matar, a philosophy lecturer at Tel Aviv University and his pen pal of several years.

At a time when Palestinian prisoners are in the headlines for their deaths, whether during interrogation or due to cancer, hunger strikes, protests or stone throwing, Daqa’s letter to Matar (written in Hebrew) offers a glimpse of the world of Palestinian prisoners from a different angle.

“The prisoners are a masculine society or subculture that praises and glorifies the values of aggressiveness and sees nonviolence as feminine,” wrote Daqa. “If a man espouses nonviolence, he is thought of almost as gay, as someone whose place is not among the freedom fighters. And of course, they don't see any contradiction between being freedom fighters and [supporting] the repression of a man's right to live how he wants, whether it's a gay man or anyone else.”

He continued, “The film has exposed the prisoners to something new. They suddenly discovered that the struggle of these 'yuppies,' these 'spineless' people from Bil'in and Na'alin, isn't simple at all, but demands faith and sacrifice, and bears with it not a little risk. And suddenly they discovered that standing exposed to the barrel of a rifle, without any means of defense, reflects courage and bravery that are far greater than the bravery required to stand behind a rifle. And I would add that in order to stand behind that rifle and be a good gunman, all you need is to be a coward and a person who lacks ethics and values.”

Daqa has been in jail for 27 years, since March 1986. In 1987, a military tribunal in Lod gave him a life sentence for his membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine cell that killed an Israel Defense Forces soldier, Moshe Tamam, in 1984.

Daqa has admitted to belonging to the cell, but continues to deny any connection to the murder. A fellow member of the cell who incriminated Daqa during questioning by the Shin Bet security service has since retracted this part of his statement, but the military tribunal dismissed Daqa's request for a retrial.

Over the years, Daqa has reached the conclusion that his social and national aspirations can be best expressed through membership in a group that is active in Israel – the Balad political party. He won a legal battle to get the Israel Prison Service to remove his classification as a member of the Popular Front, and his sentence was recently commuted to 37 years.

An “elder” who has been imprisoned for almost three decades, Daqa noted, “The movie changed the minds of many of the prisoners regarding the nonviolent popular struggle. From my perspective, the movie could be Israeli or Czech; what's important is that it shook up the prisoners' macho culture and militaristic outlook.”

“The question that remains unanswered and that prevents people from adopting the concept of a nonviolent struggle is whether such a struggle can advance [their] objectives and reach [their] goals,” he wrote. “There is a ton of literature in the jails that explains and glorifies armed struggle, but there aren't any books about Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, or the struggle of African-American citizens – Martin Luther King and others.

“If I were in the shoes of the Israeli culture minister, instead of condemning and attacking the movie and the directors, I would fund the purchase of books and studies about nonviolent struggle and flood the libraries of Israeli jails with that literature,” Daqa continued. “This movie can help prevent killing and fresh graves [from being dug] in this land.”

Israeli TV programs are one of the windows through which Daqa keeps up to date on Israeli society. On March 4, he wrote to Matar about watching the evening news, clicking between channels 2 and 10.

“Over the course of the news broadcast, during half an hour, incidents of racism were reported that, taken individually, were not sensational stories, but the mass [of such reports] on its own is frightening,” he wrote.

Daqa listed several news items: the attack on an Arab woman in Jerusalem by passersby; the attack on an Arab laborer in Tel Aviv; the similar attack two days prior on an Arab sanitation worker from Jaffa; the walkout of hundreds of Beitar Jerusalem fans from a soccer stadium when the team's Chechen Muslim player scored a goal, and the separate public transportations for settlers and Palestinian workers from the West Bank to Israel.

“If that's what made it into the headlines, it's reasonable to assume there are hundreds of incidents of racism that aren't reported, not to mention the demolition of homes in Jerusalem or the settlers' attacks on West Bank residents,” wrote Daqa. “This is a situation that requires urgent Arab-Jewish efforts. Not to come out with joint statements of condemnation and certainly not to use these incidents for political taunts, but to find the most practical ways of reducing the level of violence and making the majority see it as something contemptible.”

“This kind of discourse should not define the Israeli-Arab conflict,” he wrote. “Such a discourse is very popular among and welcomed by religious forces on both sides. Through such wordings, an extreme religious discourse is being imposed, and it overrides common sense and repels every possibility of resolution. Fascism, all fascism, thrives on hatred and the absence of rational thought and rational politics.”