JERUSALEM: Dozens of Israeli settlers took over a house in mostly Arab east Jerusalem on Tuesday armed with a court order secured after a protracted legal battle with a Palestinian family, witnesses and police said.

Members of the Al-Kurd family demonstrated in front of the house along with other Arab residents and pro-Palestinian activists as the settlers hurled the family's belongings out onto the street, a neighbour told AFP.

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmulik Ben Rubi said police sent in to break up the demonstration had arrested one of the activists.

"A group of Jews arrived at the house with a court order, saying that it was their house. They entered, and then dozens of Arabs and left-wing activists began a demonstration outside the house," Ben Rubi said.

"The order was completely legal and the entrance was completely legal. We have no right to intervene when the order is signed by the court."

But a police officer at the scene ordered the settlers to bring all of the family's belongings back into the house and to leave the premises by early afternoon, according to an AFP photographer.

The house had been sealed by the court several years ago and the Al-Kurd family was not residing there.

It is on the same street where two large Palestinian families of 53 people were evicted in August in similar circumstances, with settlers armed with court orders taking up residence in the homes.

The fate of east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Six Day war and later annexed, is one of the thorniest issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel views all of Jerusalem as its "unified, eternal" capital, but the international community has never recognised its claim to east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians have demanded as the capital of their future state.