Police evicted a Palestinian family from their home in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem yesterday to make way for Jewish settlers after a long legal battle, officials and an AFP correspondent said.
Since 1978, the Sub Laban family had fought in the Israeli courts against their eviction from their home in the Muslim Quarter of the walled Old City.
But early yesterday, police arrived to remove the family from their home following a court order.
“They do not have the right to expel me from my house,” said Nora Abu Laban, 68.
“They are thieves and they steal everything from us, they stole the house, the lands, the youth.” Israeli and Palestinian activists jostled with police in the aftermath of the eviction.
One held a placard that read “A family was evicted today” as Jewish settlers looked on, video footage filmed by AFP showed.
In May, the Sub Laban family had been served with an eviction notice and told to vacate the building by June 11.
The “family was forcibly evicted from their home by Israeli police,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for Palestinians, said in a statement.
He said 12 Israeli activists protesting against the eviction, seven women and five men, were arrested.
“Concerted efforts to evict Palestinians from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem may amount to forcible transfer,” Sunghay said.
“Forcible transfer is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime.” The European Union expressed “regret” over the decision. It urged the “Israeli government to respect international law and let these families live where they have been living for decades”.
Hazem Qasem, a spokesperson for Hamas, the group which controls the coastal Gaza Strip enclave, described the eviction as a “crime” and part of the “Zionist war on the Arab identity of Jerusalem”.
According to anti-settlement watchdog Ir Amim, some 150 Palestinian families in Jerusalem’s Old City and nearby neighbourhoods are currently threatened with eviction because of “discriminatory
laws and state collusion with settler organisations”.
Nora Sub Laban (centre) is comforted by her son Ahmad during a protest following the eviction of their family from their home in the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem’s old city to make way for settlers, yesterday.
