Selma Dabbagh

On Tuesday, the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, made a statement to the House of Commons in which he announced an ‘import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories’ and a ‘new comprehensive sanctions regime’ against ‘those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements’. In retaliation, Israel said it would close the British consulate in Jerusalem, expel British representatives from the International Gaza Support Centre, shut down the British Support Team in Ramallah and ban a dozen British MPs from entering Israel.

The Jerusalem municipality has worked to ethnically cleanse the city of its Palestinian population since the illegal occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967. Discriminatory taxes and planning laws, house demolitions, closure of Palestinian schools, hospitals and cultural centres, revocation of residency rights, harassment of businesses and restrictions on the right to entry are some of the ‘legalised’ ways in which Palestinians have been pressured to leave the city.

My friend Jawad Ali, a Palestinian American lawyer, was at his daughter’s graduation last month when he got a call from his sister in the West Bank. ‘She was crying, almost hysterical,’ he said, as she told him that settlers were ‘trying to burn us alive in our home’.

In the Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, I got into an argument with an Israeli woman who was tearing down Art Not Genocide Alliance signs from around Vera Tamari’s work, part of the exhibition In Minor Keys curated by the late Koyo Kouoh. The exhibition assistant had already told her that the artist wanted the posters to be there, but the woman insisted that Tamari was Israeli, that she had looked her up. She was so adamant that I might have doubted myself if I didn’t know members of Tamari’s family.

Last Wednesday, the reporter Amal Khalil and photojournalist Zeinab Faraj were on assignment in south Lebanon when Israeli drones struck the car in front of them. The women sought shelter in a building that was then destroyed by a direct hit. Despite continuing Israeli fire, emergency workers eventually managed to rescue Faraj from the rubble. ‘She kept hugging me,’ Faraj said from her hospital bed, her head wrapped in bandages. ‘I begged her not to sleep.’ Khalil’s body was recovered by the Red Cross the next day.