House No. 13 of the Palestinian Al-Kurd family is located in Karm al-Jaouni in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. At the entrance, a large banner reads, “We will not leave.” A group of Israeli settlers share part of the family’s house. The family has become a symbol of resistance against Israeli decisions that aim to evict Palestinians from the neighborhood.

In 1956, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood welcomed 28 Palestinian families that were displaced from the 1948 occupied territories as per an agreement between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government. The surface area of the neighborhood is estimated at 808 dunams (200 acres), and it is home today to around 2,800 people. The Israeli municipality in Jerusalem manages it.

In May, a video of a conversation between Muna al-Kurd, a Palestinian woman who lives in one of the houses threatened with eviction, and a settler who occupies half of her house, went viral. In the video, Yaacoub, the settler who took over half of Nabil al-Kurd’s family house per a decision from an Israeli court, says to Muna, “If I go, you don’t go back [to the house]. … If I don’t steal it [the house], someone else will steal it.”

Nabil, 77, said that the Israeli authorities want to expel him and his family from his home by force of arms. They are forging documents and passing laws that suit their interests and those of the settlers, he said, noting that he and his family were displaced from their house in Jaffa during the Palestinian Nakba in 1948. He was only four at the time, and now he is facing eviction and expulsion from his house in Sheikh Jarrah under the pretext that the land it was built on is owned by Jews.