JERSUSLEM, December 21, 2016 (WAFA) – The Israel High Court ruled on Tuesday that the Ghaith-Sub Laban family can stay in their Jerusalem’s Old City home for 10 more years but without their children.

The Palestinian family had petitioned the High Court against a previous lower court decision to evacuate it from the home it had been living in for decades after a Jewish settlers organization had claimed the home was owned by Jews.

The High Court ruled after months of deliberations that the parents, Nora Ghaith and her husband, Mustafa Sub Laban, remain as protected tenants and therefore can stay in their home for 10 years after which they have to turn it over to the settlers.

But meanwhile, it ruled, their children cannot live with them in the same house and if any of them do, the settlers will have the right to evacuate the whole family.

At the same time, the court allowed the settlers to take over a smaller storage room in the house, which the settlers had proposed to move the family into as a compromise solution but strongly rejected by the family.

The settlers had claimed that the house, which they say is owned by Jews since earlier last century but rented out to the Palestinian family during the Jordanian rule of East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 before Israel’s occupation the city, had been abandoned for a while and therefore the protected tenant status that applies to rented property before 1967 has been removed from the family.

The family denied that the house, located in Akbat al-Khaldieh area in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, was ever abandoned.

Nora Gheith’s parents had rented the house in 1953 from the Jordanian custodian of enemy property, who was the overseer of abandoned Jewish property after 1948. The family continued to live in the same house after the Israeli occupation of the city as protected tenants.

The protected status moved on to their daughter, Nora, and her husband Mustafa Sub Laban, as is stipulated by law since it also applies to the second generation but not the third.

The couple has three children, Ahmad, Rafat and Luma. Ahmad, a human rights activist, lives in the same house with his wife and two children, Mustafa, 9, and Kinan, 4. Rafat and Luma are not married and also live in the same house.

Nora Ghaith said the High Court ruling does in reality accept the settlers’ claim that the house was abandoned because it ordered to be turned over to them in 10 years.

The court had also forced the family to live apart when it said none of their children can live with them and if any does continue to live there, the settlers can ask for its immediate evacuation.

Commenting on the court ruling, Ahmad Sub Laban described it as racist and discriminatory against Palestinian residents of the city since it allows Jews to reclaim what they say was theirs before 1948 while Palestinians cannot claim their property they had left behind in historic Palestine after Israel’s creation in 1948.

He said the High Court acted as a government agency in support of settlers’ efforts to take over Palestinian homes in the city.

While Israel had built thousands of housing units in dozens of settlements in and around East Jerusalem for Jews only on land seized from Palestinians, the city’s Palestinian residents find themselves facing a severe housing crisis in their city due to shortage of housing.

Many had built on their land without a permit after efforts to obtain one had failed due to what they say is discriminatory policy by the all-Israeli West Jerusalem municipality headed by a right-wing mayor.

The municipality said it is going to demolish all homes built without permit, which could mean displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian residents.

M.K.