Nura Gheith Sub Laban was born at home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.
In the 1950s the family received the house from the Jordanian official in charge of property. After the city was occupied in 1967, the ownership of the house passed over to the Israeli general official in charge of property. Ever since, the family has faced the authorities’ desire to evict them and pass the house over to a colonist association. The neighbors of the family have all been evicted and their homes returned to Jews by force of the law that enables Jews to go back to a house they had deserted, and does not enable Palestinian refugees to do the same. In 2018, Nura Sub Laban was forced to live with her children for several months due to a medical condition. This absence enabled the court to deny her the rights of the protected tenant in her own home.
On July 11, 2023, at 5:15 a.m., 20 policemen arrived and evicted the family from their home, along with the Israeli activists who supported the family as it anticipated the realization of the eviction order. Immediately following, colonists entered the house and hung up the Israeli flag in the window and on the roof.
On July 22, 2023, the family members were notified that at 7:30 a.m. the next morning all their belongings would be taken out of the house. A colonist family with small children entered the house to settle in it. The children took out all the Palestinians’ belongings and placed them in the narrow alley next to the house.
This is how ethnic cleansing takes place in Jerusalem as well. The Old City was annexed by the State of Israel and its residents are residents of the Israeli state, but it is still one law for Jews and another for Palestinians.