Israeli occupation forces clamped down today on activists demonstrating outside the house of the Sub Laban family in occupied Jerusalem in protest of expulsion threats that the family is facing by the occupation authorities. Israeli police officers physically assaulted and beat up international, Palestinian and Israeli activists demonstrating in support of the Sub Laban family outside their home in Aqabat al-Khaldia quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, according to local sources. The protesters raised the Palestinian flag and banners in Arabic and English that read: “No to the occupation”, “Save the Sub Laban family”, “Displacement is a war crime”, “Save Aqabat Khalidiyah and Aqabat al-Saraya”, “Dignity, Justice”. Freedom’, ‘Stop Noura’s Displacement’, and ‘This House Is Ours’. Meantime, Israeli settlers attempted to harass those participating in the vigil, and chanted racist slogans under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces. Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territories said that it was is deeply concerned by the imminent forced eviction of the Ghaith-Sub Laban family in the Old City of Jerusalem scheduled for 11 June. Despite repeated efforts to protect their family home, the Israeli High Court had previously ruled that the protected tenancy of the elderly couple, Nora Ghaith, 68, and Mustafa Sub Laban, 72, would be terminated making way for the property to be seized by Galicia Trust, a settler organization that has been engaged in a legal battle since 2010 to evict the Sub Laban family. On May 11, an Israeli enforcement office delivered a notice of forced eviction to Nora Ghaith and her husband, Mustafa Sub Laban, and set the date for their forced displacement to Sunday, June 11. The elderly couple are at risk of being forcibly evicted and their home in the Aqbat al-Khalidiya neighborhood in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem. The Ghaith-Sub Laban family home has been leased from Jordan since 1953 and is subject to a protected lease. After more than 45 years of repeated lawsuits and harassment against the family by the occupation authorities first, and since 2010 by the Galicia settler association, which claims that the family home is a Jewish endowment, the Israeli courts decided to end the family’s protected lease and evict them from the home. The courts had previously evicted the rest of the family in 2016 and prevented the children from living with their parents, which led to the separation of the family. The family’s failure to abide by the eviction decision and voluntarily leave their home before the mentioned date, which the family rejects, means that the Israeli settlers, with the support of the government and the occupation forces, will forcibly evict the elderly couple on that date, who will be forced to pay the high cost of evicting them and their property from their home.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA