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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israeli-judges-order-grandchildren-out-jerusalem-familys-home">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israeli-judges-order-grandchildren-out-jerusalem-familys-home</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Israeli judges order grandchildren out of
Jerusalem family's home</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/charlotte-silver"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlotte Silver</a></span>
<span class="field field-blog">- </span><span
class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2016-12-21T21:50:28+00:00">21 December 2016</span></span>
</p>
<p>The Ghaith-Sub Laban family’s six-year legal battle to
remain in their home of six decades has come to an end,
as the Israeli high court made a final ruling in the
family’s eviction case on Wednesday.</p>
<p>After Jewish settlers <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/jerusalem-eviction-case-back-israels-high-court">rejected</a>
the court’s proposed compromise on Tuesday, the Israeli
judges returned a more favorable verdict to the
settlers: allowing the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nora-sub-laban">Ghaith-Sub
Laban</a> family to remain in their home for only 10
more years, and at that point terminating their
protected tenancy.</p>
<p>Without protected tenancy, the settler organization
that owns the building can evict the family.</p>
<p>But the court has ordered the descendants of Mustafa
Sub Laban and Nora Ghaith, whose mother first moved into
their house in the Muslim Quarter of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/old-city-jerusalem">Old
City in East Jerusalem</a> in 1953, to leave their
home.</p>
<p>Nora and Mustafa currently live in the house with a
daughter, two sons, a daughter-in-law and two
grandchildren aged 4 and 9.</p>
<p>Their son Ahmad Sub Laban, a journalist and field
researcher with the human rights group <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ir-amim">Ir
Amim</a>, <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/StopNorasEviction/photos/a.779239062167182.1073741828.779048635519558/1184540401637044/?type=3&theater">noted</a>
that the court’s ruling evicts part of the family.</p>
<p>If Ahmad and his brother and sister violate this
stipulation, the whole family may be evicted.</p>
<p>The high court ruling also excludes the small storage
room below their house from the decision, allowing
settlers to proceed to take that over.</p>
<h2>Last family</h2>
<p>The Ghaith-Sub Labans are the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/last-palestinian-family-jerusalem-neighborhood-fear-eviction-any-moment/14368">last
Palestinian family</a> remaining in the building. The
others have already been evicted and replaced with
Jewish settlers.</p>
<p>In a statement on Facebook, the family said, “Nora and
her family appealed to the Israeli high court asking for
a ‘remedy of justice.’ Apparently their notion of
‘justice’ is unheard of!”</p>
<p>Nora Ghaith-Sub Laban said the high court accepted the
settlers’ claim that the house was abandoned, a claim
the family has vehemently denied.</p>
<p>“The court process and final decision starkly expose
how settlers, over the course of decades, have taken
advantage of land trusts to abuse Palestinian families
in East Jerusalem,” Israeli human rights group Ir Amim
said in a statement.</p>
<p>Though the Ghaith-Sub Laban family have been at risk of
eviction since the 1970s, they have been fighting the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/kollel-galicia-trust">Kollel
Galicia Trust’s</a> determination to evict them from
their home since 2010, when the Israeli government gave
the group the property.</p>
<p>Nora’s mother first rented the house in 1953 from the
Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property.</p>
<p>The custodian assumed control of properties in East
Jerusalem that Jews had <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/jerusalem-family-gets-temporary-reprieve-eviction">abandoned</a>
in the early 20th century during the Palestinian revolts
against Zionist and British colonization.</p>
<p>Palestinian refugees from western Jerusalem often moved
into these properties in the Jerusalem after they fled
or were <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/ny-times-jerusalem-property-makes-it-protagonist-palestine-conflict/8705">ethnically
cleansed by Zionist militias in 1948</a>.</p>
<p>When she moved in, Nora’s mother was granted protected
tenancy status, which should last for three generations.</p>
<p>After Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967,
the family began to pay rent to the Israeli General
Custodian.</p>
<h2>Double standard</h2>
<p>In 2010, the Israeli General Custodian <a
href="http://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/39735">transferred
the property to Atara L’yoshna</a>, which eventually
became the Kollel Galicia Trust.</p>
<p>The organization immediately appealed to evict the
family on the basis that the family had left the
apartment and therefore forfeited their protected
tenancy status. In 2014, a Jerusalem court upheld the
settlers’ claim.</p>
<p>“[The] Israeli judiciary once again sustains the
discrimination that Palestinians face, where Israeli
settlers are allowed to reclaim property they allegedly
owned pre-1948 whereas Palestinians are prohibited from
the same,” the family said in a statement.</p>
<p>Israel has never allowed Palestinians to recover any of
the vast tracts of property seized from them in 1948.</p>
<p>“The Israeli high court, as with all similar eviction
or house demolition cases, has proved itself to be a
partner to Israel’s settlement expansion policy and to
the settler’s ambition to take over as many houses [as
possible] in occupied East Jerusalem.”</p>
<p>According to Ir Amim, the Ghaith-Sub Labans are one of
nine families in the Old City currently under threat of
eviction. Seven of these families live on the same
street as the Ghaith-Sub Labans.</p>
<h2>Settler encroachment</h2>
<p>Ir Amim and anti-settlement group Peace Now have
released data showing the settler population in the
so-called historic basin of the Old City has increased
70 percent since Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime
minister in 2009.</p>
<p>Sixty Palestinian families have been evicted in the
same time period.</p>
<p>While private settler groups like Kollel Galicia Trust
and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ateret-cohanim">Ateret
Cohanim</a> have been primarily responsible for
evicting Palestinians in the Old City over the last
year, they have received tolid support from the
government. Ir Amim says the ministry of housing and
construction’s security budget for East Jerusalem
settlers grew 119 percent since 2009.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, when the high court <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/jerusalem-family-gets-temporary-reprieve-eviction">first
granted</a> the family the right to appeal the
Jerusalem court’s ruling to evict them, the family
credited international support and attention as
partially responsible for the favorable ruling.</p>
<p>“All the efforts to pressure the Israeli government and
involve foreign diplomats are paying off,” Nora Sub
Laban said hopefully last February.</p>
<p>Representatives from the US and European consulates had
attended hearings for the family, and last year, the US
consulate <a
href="https://jru.usconsulate.gov/consulate-general-visit-underscores-u-s-concern-regarding-pattern-of-evictions-in-jerusalem/">expressed</a>
“concern” over the family’s pending eviction.</p>
<p>But Wednesday’s high court ruling laid bare the paucity
of such rhetoric from states that have demonstrated
their unconditional support for Israel while it
continues to force Palestinians off their land and out
of their homes.</p>
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