Bizarre Jerusalem family case shows peace, settlements incompatible
The bizarre case of the Sublaban family reflects how the Israeli settlement policy has spun out of control as a couple has been allowed to stay in its Jerusalem home for 10 years on condition that their children can’t stay with them.
Three days before the world community reiterated at the UN Security Council on Dec. 23 that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are unauthorized, the Israeli High Court was trying to justify the expulsion of a Palestinian family in Jerusalem’s Old City.
In responding to an appeal against the family's expulsion from the home it has lived in since 1953, the Israeli High Court ruled Dec. 20 that Mustafa and Nora Sublaban can stay in their home 10 more years — but on condition that their children can’t live with them so as not to transfer ownership to the third generation. A small storage room that also belonged to the family was granted to the hard-line settler movement that has been trying to expel the Sublaban family.
The Sublaban family has rented the home from the Jordanian government since 1953. Family members told Al-Monitor that since the 1970s, Jewish settler groups have eyed their home and have prevented them from all attempts to renovate or fix it, claiming that the house belonged to a Jewish family before 1948. The Jewish family that reportedly lived in the house before Israel was created is not part of the expulsion attempt; rather, a right-wing Jewish group called Kollel Galicia Trust is behind the attempt.
Mohammad Dahleh, the attorney for the Sublaban family, told Al-Monitor that the ruling is “unprecedented" and one of the strangest he has seen. “Allowing the woman who was born in this house to live in it for 10 years and preventing her children from being with her has never been ruled on by Israel’s highest court. They tried to appear to show justice to Nora Sublaban, while tying her hands as to how the house she has a right to can be used.”
