In follow up to yesterday's alert below, late yesterday the Israeli High Court panel returned its decision in the Ghaith-Sub Laban eviction case. The Court granted approval for Nora Gaith and huband Mustafa Sub Laban to remain in their home for 10 years, after which their protected tenancy will be terminated. The judgement does not apply to the third generation of protected tenants, Ahmad and Rafat Sub Laban, and their respective families.  This decision constitutes the final judgement in the Gaith-Sub Laban case and the end of the family's legal battle.

December 20, 2016

Yesterday a three judge panel of High Court justices heard the Gaith-Sub Laban family’s petition to appeal to the High Court of Justice – the last legal step to be exhausted after the 2014 Magistrate Court decision to evict the family from its home in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and the family’s unsuccessful 2015 appeal to the District Court.  The family of Ir Amim field researcher Ahmad Sub Laban has garnered international attention for its near 40 year battle to maintain its protected tenancy and beat back persistent attempts by the Atara Leyoshna settler organization to assume control of the apartment the Gaith family has rented since 1954.  The case exemplifies the inequitable treatment of Palestinians and Israelis under Israeli law, which enables settlers – often operating under trusts established by families to which they are completely unrelated – to assert claims to Jewish assets from before 1948 but provides no parallel channels for Palestinians to recover their land and property.

After hearing from both parties' attorneys, the panel of justices proposed a compromise by which Nura Ghaith - representing the second generation covered under the protected tenancy contract - and her husband Mustafa Sub Laban would remain in the apartment but son Ahmad and his family of four would immediately vacate the premises.  The settlers’ attorney  countered by suggesting that the elder Sub Labans live in the family's storefront downstairs - a 25 square meter, windowless room - while the apartment be “returned” to the settlers.  The judges summarily dismissed the proposition, declaring that they would issue their decision on the family’s request to appeal in the coming days.

The Gaith-Sub Labans are one of nine families in the Old City currently under threat of eviction, seven of which live on the same street as the Gaith-Sub Labans.  In the last two years an additional four Palestinian families in the Old City have been forced from their homes.  The mounting pressure on these families represents the broader trend of a fast multiplying settler presence in the Historic Basin.  In October, Ir Amim and Peace Now – in tandem with their joint report, Broken Trust: State Involvement in Private Settlement in Batan Al-Hawa, Silwan – released new data showing that since the election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009, the number of new settlement sites in the Historic Basin has increased by 60%, the number of settler housing units has grown twofold, the number of settlers has grown by 70% and 60 Palestinian families have been evicted from their homes. The Ministry of Housing and Construction’s security budget for East Jerusalem settlers grew 119% during this time period.  

As argued in the Batan al-Hawa report, groups like Atara Leyoshna and Ateret Cohanim (and outgrowth of the former) serve an integral role in efforts by settler organizations and Israeli authorities to consolidate Jewish control of the Old City and the surrounding Palestinian neighborhoods, to create an irreversible reality in the Holy Basin around the Old City that deliberately subverts efforts to negotiate an agreed political resolution on Jerusalem.  

Please link here for more data.

Background on Sub Laban Case

On October 11, 2015, the District Court of Jerusalem denied the Gaith-Sub Laban family’s appeal against eviction, ordering the appellant (Nura Gaith-Sub Laban) to pay NIS 10,000 in court fees and to vacate the property within 45 days of the judgment after the family’s near 40-year struggle to hold onto its home.  The three-judge panel deferred to the decision of the Magistrate’s Court, ruling there was insufficient cause to interfere with the decision of the lower court, itself based on adequate evidence that the appellant had “abandoned” her home.  The judges also found no reason to issue a “just remedy” – meaning they chose not to exercise their discretion, provided for by law, to issue a remedy outside the letter of the law. 

On May 31, 2015 the District Court heard the Sub Laban family’s appeal against the loss of their protected tenancy status, at risk since October 2014 when the Magistrate Court accepted Atara Leyoshna’s claim that the family had violated the terms of its status and could therefore be justifiably evicted from its home.  Despite an appeal having been scheduled, the family had been under constant threat of eviction, with several hostile eviction attempts by settlers throughout the year prior to the hearing.  

The Sub Laban family first rented the apartment from the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property (property owned by Jews prior to 1948) in 1954, at which point it was awarded protected tenancy status. The family has consistently maintained this status – from 1948 through 1967, until today – and has continued to pay rent to the Israeli General Custodian, which assumed control of properties administered by the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property.  Despite its protected status, the Sub Labans have been under unrelenting threat of eviction since 1978, first by the General Custodian and later by Atara Leyoshna.  Other Palestinian families living in the family's building have been gradually evicted over the years and their apartments handed over to settlers.  In an attempt to force the Sub Labans out, settlers blocked the stairway leading to the family’s apartment.  For 15 years the apartment could be entered only through a neighbor's unit, until the Court ordered the stairway unsealed in 2001.

In May 2010 the General Custodian conveyed the apartment to Atara Leyoshna and soon after the organization filed an appeal for the family's eviction.  In October 2014, the Magistrate Court accepted Atara Leyoshna’s claim that the family had left the apartment (for certain periods of time the family was forced to leave their home due to such obstacles as the stairway closure); therefore, it successfully claimed, the family had lost the right to protected tenancy status and could be evicted.

For all inquiries, please contact:

Betty Herschman

Director of International Relations & Advocacy

Ir Amim (City of Nations/City of Peoples)

betty@ir-amim.org.il

054-308-5096

www.ir-amim.org.il

Facebook: tinyurl.com/IrAmimEng

Twitter: @IrAmimAlerts