Palestine slams weak reaction to Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Jerusalem

Palestine on Wednesday blasted the international community’s failure to mount a strong protest to what it called Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” in occupied East Jerusalem.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry accused Israel of seeking “to empty Jerusalem and its surroundings of the Palestinian presence.”

On Tuesday, the Israeli police forcibly evicted a Palestinian family from their home in Aqbat al-Khalidiya in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City and allowed settlers into the house.

The eviction followed an order by Israeli judicial authorities for 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 under Jewish ownership before 1948.

The Palestinian family has lived in the house since 1953.

The international reactions “do not rise to the level of the suffering, pain and injustice that the Palestinian people are subjected to, and to the heinous crime that this family was subjected to, which amounts to a crime against humanity,” the ministry said.

These reactions “reflect unjust international double standards in dealing with international law, human rights, and international legitimacy, and reflect the absence of international will to take the necessary practical measures to compel the occupying state to stop all its illegal unilateral measures,” it added.

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.