Palestinian couple evicted from Jerusalem home

November 11, 2008

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Israeli police evicted a disabled Palestinian man and his wife from their Jerusalem home of more than 50 years.

The eviction followed a court order in July that found that the eastern Jerusalem home, provided to the couple in 1956 by the Jordanian government and a U.N. refugee agency, was built on land they did not own. A Jewish group said it has Ottoman-era documents proving the land originally was owned by Jews who fled in 1948 when Jordanian troops overran eastern Jerusalem, according to The Associated Press.

The wheelchair-bound Palestinian man, Mohammed al-Kurd, and his wife, Fawzieh, were removed from the building before dawn Sunday. The eviction came despite a plea by the U.S. consulate to keep the couple in their home.

Now in their 60s, the al-Kurds became refugees when the newly established State of Israel took over their family holdings in western Jerusalem and in Jaffa, neighbors said, according to the AP report.

Palestinians and some Israeli groups protested the eviction as inhumane.

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