Israel forcibly evicts Palestinian family from East Jerusalem home

Israeli police evicted a Palestinian family from their home in occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday, according to owners.

"Police stormed the house as we were asleep and evicted us from the building," Ahmed Sub Laban told reporters.

Witnesses said police later allowed Israeli settlers into the house in Aqbat al-Khalidiya in Jerusalem's Old City.

Earlier this year, Israeli judicial authorities ordered the Sub Laban family to vacate their house in favor of settlers.

The court's decision was based on claims by settler groups that the house had been in Jewish ownership before 1948.

The Palestinian family has lived in the house since 1953.

Supporters have staged several events in solidarity with the Palestinian family, which has refused to voluntarily vacate their home since the court's decision.

The Sub Laban family has been resisting eviction since 2010, when the Israeli government formally ceded the property to the Kollel Galicia Trust, a private settler group.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 218 Palestinian households in East Jerusalem face the threat of eviction.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, along with the entire West Bank, during the 1967 Middle East War. It formally annexed the city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.