On May 1, the police showed up at the school where Mr. Qattousa was working and arrested him.

Mr. Qattousa has three daughters. The youngest, Rafif, is herself 7. Her father was allowed to call home to speak to her from jail.

“She couldn’t handle it,” her mother said. “She just said, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ then threw the phone down and ran to her bed and cried.”

But the allegations made no sense, his family said. The day the rape was said to have occurred, in April, Mr. Qattousa was working a side job renovating a schoolteacher’s home, and she corroborated this. So the police revised the charges to reflect an uncertain date.

Then there was the matter of the march down the street in broad daylight.

Palestinian workers are not allowed to roam freely in Jewish settlements. They are shuttled to their workplaces in the morning and back to the gates in the evening. Any unescorted worker can have his work permit torn up on the spot.