February 3, 2019

1) The Execution Office has delivered a notice of eviction to the 7-member Abu Asab family, according to which the family has until February 12 before they will be displaced from their home on Al Qarami Street in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.  The family rented the home from the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property in the 1960s. The current primary occupant is one of the second generation of protected tenants stemming from the original contract. She lives with her nephew, his wife and four of their children.  

In 2014, settlers – via the Maisel Trust – filed an eviction demand against the family in the Magistrate Court claiming that the family had abandoned the home and that on that basis its protected tenancy status should be annulled. The Court ruled in the settlers’ favor in 2017.  In 2018, the District Court rejected an appeal against the decision and the Supreme Court subsequently denied the family’s request to appeal the District Court judgement.

2) Some 100 meters away, on Khalidiya Street, the Ghaith-Sub Laban family is under renewed threat of eviction.  The family of veteran Ir Amim field researcher Ahmad Sub Laban fought a decades-long battle to maintain possession of its home.  In December 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that Nora Gaith and husband Mustafa Sub Laban could remain in the apartment for 10 years, after which their protected tenancy will be prematurely terminated and their children’s protected status annulled.

Last week, more than two years after the Supreme Court decision, the family received notice that the settler-managed Gengel Trust has filed a new eviction demand in the Magistrate Court based on the claim of home abandonment.

Altogether, there are a total of 8 families at risk of eviction on the two aforementioned streets of the Muslim Quarter: 6 families on Khalidiya Street and an additional 2 families on Al Qarami Street.

3) Today, February 3, marks the eviction date issued by the Execution Office against the Sabbagh family in Sheikh Jarrah.

The extended Sabbagh family recently lost a Supreme Court petition to introduce new Ottoman era documents offering evidence with which to challenge the original claim of Jewish ownership rights over the parcel of land on which their home was built – the basis of a protracted settler campaign to assume control of the Sabbagh home. The family’s attorney subsequently filed an administrative appeal with the Execution Office. The resultant temporary freeze remains in effect pending a response from Nahalat Shimon Ltd. (the settler-run company demanding the eviction), after which the decision to freeze the eviction will be reviewed.

If evicted, the Sabbagh family home will be the 10th to be seized by settlers in the Kerem Alja’oni section of Silwan, where roughly 30 Palestinian families are currently under threat of eviction. At least 11 have cases pending in court – cases that were suspended pending the Supreme Court decision on the Sabbagh eviction. Removal of that stop-gap could usher in a wave of new evictions in this section of Sheikh Jarrah.

These three concurrent cases give strong evidence of rapidly escalating new facts on the ground – promoted by settlers with the benefit of legal and political support from the state – to further entrench Israeli control in and around the Old City. 

Please send all inquiries to:

Betty Herschman

Director of International Relations & Advocacy

Ir Amim (City of Nations/City of Peoples)

Jerusalem

betty@ir-amim.org.il

054-308-5096

www.ir-amim.org.il

Facebook: www.facebook.com/IrAmimEng

Twitter: @IrAmimAlerts