A young Palestinian boy in thick eyeglasses stood dumbstruck as Israeli police dragged his grandmother, Rifqa, out of his family home. His eyes shifted between the uniformed men and the 92-year-old woman who squirmed in their clutches. Shouts rang out and, within minutes, the family was driven out of half of their home in East Jerusalem.

It was a hot August day in 2009. CNN witnessed those scenes, which the then 12-year-old Mohammed el-Kurd says he can barely remember today.

Abutting his current family residence is the part of the house his grandmother -- who died last year at the age of 103 -- once lived. A Jewish man lives there now -- a settler, according to international law. Outside, a playground that was once an island of serenity for the Kurd children is strewn with litter and thick overgrowth. An olive tree which his family planted in 2000 stands in the middle of the garden.

"It was the first time I felt how minuscule I was in comparison to the hundreds of army and police and occupation forces that were accompanying settlers and throwing people outside of their homes," Kurd told CNN from the family's home in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem this week.