The legal situation in Sheikh Jarrah is ambiguous: Israeli courts have recently ruled that Jewish claims to ownership of land and houses in the neighborhood, from long before 1948, are valid and constitute a basis for evicting the Palestinian residents, all of whom received these lands from the Jordanian government in the 1950s in exchange for their UNRWA cards (thus relinquishing their status as refugees). But the issue is not really a legal one. The government, the municipality, and the settlers want to take over yet another Palestinian neighborhood—another 26 homes are scheduled for eviction, in addition to the three that have already been evacuated—and, of course, to prevent any future compromise in Jerusalem.

As a result, hundreds of Israelis, many of them young people joining the struggle for the first time, take off Friday afternoons to march through town and then demonstrate, courting arrest and harassment, in Sheikh Jarrah; the clumsy attempts by the Jerusalem police to suppress the protest violently have only added to our numbers. The demonstrations have a festive character, with drummers, acrobats, and clowns (the police arrested the clowns). Rumors about the demise of the Israeli peace movement are, it seems, premature.

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They are now living on the streets, homeless. Just a week ago they were living inside their home and now there are Jewish settlers inside, exhibiting not the least bit of remorse for the homeless family just outside. The Hanoun family’s furniture was seized by Israeli forces and they are now responsible for paying the storage and mover fees. Meanwhile, the Jewish settlers are living with round-the-clock security, not allowing anyone near. At one house, the police actually had the nerve to tell us not to film too close, as we should respect the privacy of the new residents.

This is just one of several plans by various real estate groups such as Nahalat Shimon International and American businessmen such as Irving Moskowitz, to populate the areas surrounding the Old City with Jewish strongholds that sever Palestinian territorial contiguity in East Jerusalem. This prejudices any final resolution in which East Jerusalem would be the Palestinian capital. It is also in clear breach of Israel’s commitment under the Road Map. But these operations are backed by the Israel Lands Administration, the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israeli government, who are all working together to undermine any possibility for a two-state solution and are blatantly infringing on the basic human rights of the residents of what they deem to be the “united Jerusalem.”