Israel forcibly expels Palestinian family from their home in occupied al-Quds

Israeli forces and extremist settlers have expelled a Palestinian family from their home in occupied East al-Quds as the Tel Aviv regime escalates the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes across the occupied territories.

Just after dawn on Tuesday, dozens of Israeli police and paramilitary officers raided the Ghaith-Sub Laban family in Quds’ Old City and forced them out before the illegal settlers moved in.

The house is located in Aqabat al-Khalidiya neighborhood, near al-Aqsa Mosque.

Videos shared online showed members of the family pushed out into the streets, shouting and crying in distress.

Mustafa Sub Laban, 72, was inside the house when Israeli forces arrived, while his wife, Nora Sub Laban, 68, was outside. Nora told local media after returning to her home to find it seized by police that the Israeli regime had stolen everything from Palestinians.

“They [Israeli forces] don’t know democracy... They are a regime of criminals, thieves who have stolen everything from us,” Nora said, sitting outside her home.

“They have stolen homes, land, youth, children, women, they have stolen everything. The whole world witnessed what they did in Huwwara, Jenin, Nablus, Silwan and in Sheikh Jarrah as well as the Old City of al-Quds and the al-Aqsa Mosque,” she added.

“I am surrounded by Israeli settlers, we are the only Arabs left here in this home. They hate us, you can see one of the settlers dancing around here, happy that they are taking our home from us.” Nora noted

Activists had come out to denounce the Israeli forces’ use of violence to seize the home. They were quickly dispersed along with journalists at the scene. The regime's police arrested at least five people.

The removal of the family comes after Israel’s so-called supreme court previously ruled in favor of a settler group, the Galicia Settlement Association, which claimed the house was owned by Jews before 1948. 

The Ghaith-Sub Laban family has been renting the home since 1953, while the eastern half of al-Quds, including the Old City, was under Jordanian administration.

The family had been fighting the expulsion attempts in Israeli courts since 2010.

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In 2014, an Israeli magistrate court ruled that the family no longer held protected tenant status and that the settlers could displace the family.

“The case was decided against the family by a magistrate who was herself a settler,” a 2016 report by then-UN Special Rapporteur Makarim Wibisono read.

Ahmad Sub Laban, Mustafa and Nora's son, previously told Middleeasteye website that the family fought settler attempts to take their home for about 45 years.

“Imagine a family where the parents are all the time going to the Israeli court, where they’re putting all their money to a lawyer just to protect their property,”  Ahmad said. “I remember when I was young, my parents would always be going to the court. It was awful, all the time."

Late last month, Palestinian civil society and rights groups released a statement blasting Israel’s efforts to displace the family, which they said is “forcible transfer, which constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute”.

The statement said the ongoing expulsions of Palestinians are a “result of the international community’s deliberate failure and unwillingness to take effective and meaningful measures to end Israel’s illegal occupation, and settler-colonial apartheid regime.”

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The groups also called states to take action, “including through arms embargoes, economic sanctions and countermeasures against Israel; and targeted individual sanctions against Israeli settler organizations.”

UN experts recently said that the international community must take action to stop systematic and deliberate housing demolition and sealing, arbitrary displacement and forced evictions of Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank.

Israel routinely demolishes Palestinian houses in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds, claiming that the structures have been built without permits, which are almost impossible to obtain. They also sometimes order Palestinian owners to demolish their own houses or pay the costs of the demolition.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in some 280 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and al-Quds.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The United Nations Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East al-Quds as its capital.

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