Middle East Monitor / June 12, 2023
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, EUpalestinians, yesterday warned that hundreds of Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem “are at risk of forced eviction.”
In a tweet, she wrote: “EUREP, together with other diplomatic missions, visited the Ghaith-Sub Laban family, ordered to leave their home in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem where they have lived for decades by 11 June..”
She added: “This takes place in a context, where an estimated 150 Palestinian families in East Jerusalem are at risk of forced eviction and displacement by Israeli authorities.”
The EU official recalled, in her tweet, “the EU’s opposition to Israel’s settlement policy and actions taken in this context, including evictions.”
The Sub Laban family’s house is located in a building in Aqabat al-Khalidiyah in the Old City, directly overlooking Al-Aqsa Mosque.
It is inhabited by 70-year-old Mustafa Sub Laban and his wife Nora.
Jewish settlers have previously seized the upper part of the building and another part of it, and it was surrounded by illegal Jewish settlements on all sides.
A case was filed by a settler group against the Sub Laban family in an attempt to forcibly evict them from their home in 1978. The family took the case to court and won seven times.
However, in 2010, the occupation authorities transferred the property to Ateret Cohanim settlement association, which began filing cases against the family in an attempt to forcibly deport them.
In 2016, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a decision to prevent children and grandchildren from living in the home, with the aim of preventing them from claiming the right to protection it as a third generation.
