Just across the street, but out of reach

Keeping an eye on his former home, Maher Hannoun sits in a plastic chair on the pavement opposite, in the shade of an olive tree. "We'll live on the streets until we can move back home. For now, the sky is our roof and the street our bed," says Mr Hannoun as he recounts what has happened to him and his family.

On August 2 last year, two Palestinian families – the Hannouns and Al Ghawis - were evicted from their homes in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem. Israeli settlers moved in the same day. After a lengthy court battle between the settler movement and the families, the court had finally ruled in the settlers' favour and 53 Palestinians, 20 of whom were children, were made homeless.

"We don't want anything - no bags of flower or sugar, and definitely no tent. This is not about humanitarian aid. We simply want to move back into our home, the house where our family has lived since 1956", says Mr Hannoun. Four months on, he and his neighbours are still hard at work protesting the evictions.

The Hannoun family is one of 28 families refugeed in 1948 that moved into houses in Sheikh Jarrah that the UNWRA, the United Nations relief agency for refugees, built for them on land provided by the Jordanian Government in 1956. The Hannoun family had been displaced from their home in Haifa.

When I arrived in Jerusalem, I tried to understand the reasons for the eviction. Jerusalem, in spite of Israeli claims to the contrary, is a divided city. Under international law Jerusalem consists of Palestinian East Jerusalem, and Israeli West Jerusalem. Facts on the ground suggest the situation is more complex. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war.

This unilateral annexation, never recognised by the international community, has run against numerous UN resolutions which state that East Jerusalem is occupied territory. In violation of international law, 200,000 Israeli settlers currently live in East Jerusalem, the area slated as the prospective capital of a Palestinian state. The settlers cite various reasons for targeting Sheikh Jarrah, including the presence of a Jewish holy man's grave in the area. But a quick glance at the map reveals how strategic the location is, just north of the Old City in the Holy Basin.

"OK," says Mr Hannoun, "if the court accepts that Israeli settlers can move into our homes because they prove pre-1948 ownership, we should be able to do the same. We can prove we owned our homes in Haifa prior to 1948. We should be able to move there, shouldn't we?"

The argument seems logical. But the fact is that Palestinian families cannot move back to Haifa. The law of return does not apply to them, only to Israelis.

"Our only hope is to get a political decision overturning the court ruling. That is why it is so important that you, and all the other internationals visiting us, tell our story and let the whole world know what is happening to us in Sheihk Jarrah", concludes Mr Hannoun.