Jalal Abukhater

Jerusalemites face occupation and apartheid. No amount of strongly worded statements and money pledges can help them.

Settlers are violently blocking Palestinians from accessing the green spaces of the occupied West Bank.

It would not do more damage to Palestinian resistance than it would to British politics.

It feels personal when I hear that the US embassy in Jerusalem will be built on land stolen from Palestinians.

But this does not mean there is no hope.

We lost yet another revered Palestinian icon to the Israeli occupation.

A Palestinian Jerusalemite, I live in a surveillance society reminiscent of those in dystopian science fiction novels.

The Israeli authorities resented the success of Palestinian activism in Jerusalem and now want to quash it.

And it has made colonial violence a permanent feature of Palestinian lives in the holy city.

Israel’s diplomatic standing in the world is on the rise, and its illegal occupation is rapidly being normalised.