Israel evicts Palestinian family from home after 45-year legal battle

Nora Ghaith-Sub Laban and her family were evicted from their home (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

Israeli authorities evicted a Palestinian family from a contested apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City on Tuesday, capping a decades-long legal battle that has come to symbolise the conflicting claims to the holy city.

Activists say the Ghaith-Sub Laban family’s removal is part of a wider trend of Israeli settlers encroaching on Palestinian neighbourhoods with the government’s backing and cementing Israeli control by seizing property in contested east Jerusalem.