Palestinians in East Jerusalem battle for their homes

Ahmad Sub Laban gently peeled back the blinds covering a window in his home, revealing the golden Dome of the Rock in Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
"If you look outside this window, you will understand exactly why the Israelis are targeting us with eviction," 
The Sub Labans are among at least 180 Palestinian families threatened with eviction by Israeli settler groups throughout occupied East Jerusalem, including 21 families in the Old City.
The Sub Labans are considered "protected tenants", a status originating from an Ottoman-era law that guards against arbitrary evictions and establishes rent controls. After Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the status was abolished, but for those who had already obtained it, the Israeli government issued the Third Generation Law, which strips Palestinians of the right after three generations of protected tenancy.
'I have lived in this apartment for my entire life, but we are seeing Palestinians being evicted from their homes all around us,' says Abu Naser Kastaro 
The conditions for maintaining protected tenancy are also extremely stringent; even renovating a small piece of an apartment could lead to revocation, said Daniel Seidemann, director of the nonprofit group Jerusalem Terrestrial. Hundreds of Palestinians in the city are protected tenants, according to a field researcher from the Jerusalem-based nonprofit organisation Ir Amim.
Some Palestinians with protected tenancy in the Old City say that Israeli settler groups have hastily moved to evict them after the death of the last member of their family's third generation. Others say that their rights have been systematically eroded in the Israeli court system in an effort to increase the Jewish presence in occupied East Jerusalem.
Surrounded by Israeli settlers, the Sub Labans are the last Palestinians left in their apartment building in the neighbourhood of al-Khaldiya. The cobblestone steps outside their building lead to a large Star of David and a string of Israeli flags.
The family received their latest eviction order in 2010, after being accused by Israeli settlers of not living in the apartment, which would nullify their protected tenancy agreement. The family vehemently denied the accusation.
Late last year, the Israeli Supreme Court concluded the decades-long property dispute with a controversial ruling: Nora and Mustafa Sub Laban, Ahmad's parents, would be permitted to stay in their apartment for 10 years, but Ahmad, his wife, two small children and two siblings would be evicted.
"It's like I am being held on death row,". "They have sentenced a piece of me to death, and now my husband and I have 10 years to wait in isolation for the day the settlers come to evict us."
The street outside the Sub Laban family's apartment in the al-Khaldiya neighbourhood of the Old City is decorated with Israeli flags and symbols 
Ahmad said that his grandmother signed a rental agreement with the Jordanian government in 1953, making Nora the second generation of the protected tenancy. However, the Israeli court stripped the right from Ahmad and his siblings, who have continued to contest the decision, saying that they should be shielded from eviction as the family's third generation.
"They revoked our rights in the Israeli courts," Ahmad said. "This is an Israeli policy: use every possible means to remove Palestinian residents and replace them with Israeli settlers."
WATCH: Israeli court rules against Palestinian family's eviction
The apartment building where the Sub Labans live had once been a trust for 19th-century Jews migrating from the Galicia region of Eastern Europe. Many of these properties were repurposed by the Jordanian government to house Palestinian refugees displaced from their villages after the 1948 war.
In 1967, the properties were transferred to Israel's General Custodian. Several years later, Israel passed the Legal and Administrative Matters Law, allowing Israelis to claim property in East Jerusalem believed to have been owned by Jews before 1948.
The settlers who subsequently moved into the area arrived with a mentality to "take as much as they can from Palestinians", Ahmad said.
Last year, Israeli settlers drilled several large holes into the wall of Ahmad's children's bedroom. The austere restrictions on home renovations for residents with protected tenancy has prevented the family from fixing the damage.
"They try to make life as difficult as possible for us," Ahmad said.

Source:  Aljazeera