Secretary of State John Kerry, scheduled to arrive in the region on May 21, is sparing no effort to thaw the thick ice between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). As previously reported by my colleague Shlomi Eldar, Kerry has found a “magic bullet” which, he hopes, will enable him to announce resumption of the diplomatic process based on the 1967 borders and land swaps. Kerry is trying to persuade Netanyahu to propose a package of goodwill measures to his Palestinian counterpart, such as a partial construction freeze in the settlements and the release of several hundred Palestinians jailed in Israel for ''security-related offenses.'' But one decision by the Supreme Court, due to be rendered in Jerusalem on May 20 — just one day before the secretary’s scheduled arrival — could set the territories on fire and quash his efforts.

If Israel's highest judicial authority adopts the December 2012 ruling of the Jerusalem District Court, 79-year-old Ayoub Shamasneh, his wife Fahima and their six children will be evicted from their home and thrown into the street. The ramshackle abode, located in the heart of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, will be taken over by right-wing Jews who, as is their habit, will fly an Israeli flag over the building. Even more serious is that a Supreme Court rejection of the Shamasneh family’s appeal will likely result in a new wave of “eviction and occupation” of dozens of houses in the East Jerusalem neighborhood, named by the settlers Shimon Hatzadik [Shimon the righteous], after a four-year lull. Such a wave could turn US peace efforts into a fleeting memory and sidetrack the conflict, turning it instead toward the 1948 narrative and the dead-end issue of the right of return.

Right-wing Jews have been claiming that the Shamasneh family’s house, just like most of the adjacent ones, was built on lands owned by a Jewish family until the 1948 War of Independence. After the war, while the Israeli government was settling Jews in the homes of Palestinians in the western part of Jerusalem, the Jordanian government was renting out Jewish property in the eastern part of the city to Palestinian refugees.

After Jerusalem was conquered in June 1967, the administration of these properties was handed over to Israel’s Custodian of Absentee Property, who renewed the rental agreements with the Palestinian tenants. But, according to a law passed by the Knesset in 1970, the Custodian is required to turn over properties to their Jewish owners whenever they ask. Nonetheless, a tenant protection law grants immunity from eviction to Palestinians who have lived in their houses since before 1968. The Shamasneh family, like eight or nine other families evicted in recent years from their houses in the neighborhood, was unsuccessful in proving to the court that it had been living in the house since before the relevant date, or in providing its contract with the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property. By the way, several of those evicted families have ownership certificates for spacious houses in the western part of Jerusalem, but Israeli law does not grant them the right to reclaim their homes and throw the tenants out into the street.