Anti-Palestinian graffiti in the West Bank

At 4.15am last August, police arrived at Nassir Inbari's home in Sheikh Jarrah, an Arab neighbourhood in east Jerusalem. After blowing off the front door using explosives, they evicted Nassir and the 37 members of his extended family, throwing them out onto the street. Despite the fact his family were given the house as Palestinian refugees in 1948, the Israeli courts ruled last summer that the vast majority of the Palestinian neighbourhood should be occupied by Jewish settlers as it said there was evidence Jews once inhabited the area.

But Nassir and his family haven't gone far. From 9am every morning until 10pm at night, Nassir sits opposite his former home with his wife Maysson and children on a large blue couch that has seen better days. The Inbaris refuse to let their home out of their sight. They rent a nearby apartment which they return to at night but spend each day facing the house they once called home, which is now adorned with Israeli flags, in a form of protest. "That is my house. There may be settlers there now but it is still my house. We were given these houses as refugees. Now the Israelis say this land once belonged to the Jews and we're out."

It isn't the first time Nassir and his family have been evicted. In 2002, his family were also thrown out on the street. They pitched a tent where their couch now rests and were successful in the courts which returned their family home to them. But a court battle ensued. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that there wasn't enough documentary evidence to prove definitively the Palestinians or the Jews should have ownership of this neighbourhood. Eventually, Nassir says he obtained documentary proof from the Israeli archives stating that the house had been signed over to his family by the Jordanians. "But the Israeli courts said it did not recognise this 110-year-old document because of the paper it was written on. It is a very weak reason. We just want some justice but the courts are not on our side. The plan of the Israelis is to cleanse the Palestinians from East Jerusalem," adds Nassir.

His children often ask him when they can go home. "They evicted only my body. But they cannot evict my soul from that house. When the police came to evict us, it was like an action movie. I told them we had no weapons but they blew up the front door anyway. My son Adam asks me often when can we go home. I tell him, 'I don't know. Maybe never.'"

Nassir has had some interaction with the Jewish settlers living in the place he still calls home. "I asked one of the men why he was in my home and he replied, 'Mr Nassir, it is not me. It's God. God told me to take your house. I cannot refuse the order of my God.'"

Avner Inbar, an Israeli peace activist who has been protesting about the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, says the Israeli government is acting with impunity in its actions against the Palestinians in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority claims that East Jerusalem is part of the West Bank, and consequently a part of the Palestinian territories, but it was annexed to Israel under its domestic laws in 1980. "They are trying to force the Palestinians out and it is working," says Inbar. "The secret of their success is that it's not extremely brutal. They are using bureaucracy instead."