JERUSALEM, November 15, 2011 (WAFA) – A Palestinian family who has been living in Silwan for decades is slated to lose its house to Jewish settlers, said the Wadi Hilweh Information Center on Tuesday.

According to the center, the Israeli authorities had informed the Sumrain family, which lives in the house located in Wadi Hilweh, an area of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, that settlers are trying to take over the house and turn it into the Jewish City of David. The family was informed that they have until November 28 to vacate their house or they will be forcibly evicted.

The family was also told it has to pay a Jewish settlement group two million Israeli shekels (about $600,000) for using the house, which the settlers claim was owned by them.

According to Wadi Hilweh Information Center, the Palestinian family has been living in the house for decades and has been engaged in a long legal battle with the Israeli authorities over ownership of the house.

The Israelis claim the house and property nearby is owned by Jews since early last century and that the family has lost a legal battle proving ownership, which prompted an Israeli court to rule that the house does belong to Jews.

The family has already lost a plot of land near the house to the Jewish Elad settlement group, which is spearheading turning Wadi Hilweh and all of Silwan, where 30,000 Palestinians live in an overcrowded area located just below the Old City of Jerusalem, into an all-Jewish area.

“Over the decades, (Israeli) authorities have used the same tactics to appropriate many other Palestinian homes and properties in Silwan, claiming that the land belonged to Jewish people,” said the Wadi Hilweh center.

“On occasions when defendants have proved this to be incorrect, the nominated Absentee Property guardian orders the threatened family to leave their house, complaining that the real owner lives out of the country. Through a persistent limiting of defendant families’ legal options, the houses are then acquisitioned by the state which turns them over to Elad and other settlement organizations,” it said.

M.S./F.J.