Israel Matzav: Dorit Beinish: The gift that keeps on giving to the Left

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Dorit Beinish: The gift that keeps on giving to the Left

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinish has retired from the bench, but before she did, she sat on several panels on highly political cases, and she continues to issue rulings that are invariably one-sided. Here's another one.

Beinish ruled that a revenant who cultivated land near the town of Kedumim for more than ten years could not defeat a claim by a purported 'Palestinian' landowner by using an Ottoman law (which is the source of property law in Judea and Samaria) that states that if you have possession for ten years, no one can contest your ownership. What's worse is that there are dozens - if not hundreds - of cases like this in Judea and Samaria, and no one can feel secure after this ruling.

In the ruling, the court accepted a petition brought by three Palestinian landowners, and ordered the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria to enforce Lesens’s evacuation from the land by April 20.

Lesens must also pay the Palestinians NIS 20,000 and an additional NIS 10,000 to the civil administration.

Yesh Din filed the petition in 2009, two years after the Palestinians said they saw Lesens had fenced off the plot of land, and planted crops and installed an irrigation system on it.

The Palestinians first complained to the civil administration, which issued an evacuation order against Lesens.

But that order was never fulfilled, as Lesens appealed to the military committee of appeals asking for it to be revoked. The committee did so.

Lesens argued that because Kedumim settlers had cultivated the West Bank land for more than 10 years, he was entitled under Section 20 of the Ottoman Land Law to be considered its owner. (Land law in the West Bank is based on Ottoman land codes, to which various amendments have been made.) The High Court, however, dismissed Lesens’s claims regarding the land law, which deals with disputes and states that no claims can be made against against someone who has cultivated a plot of land peaceably for more than 10 years.

In the ruling, Beinisch said Lesens had not provided proof to the court that he had cultivated the land for over a decade, and that he still would have needed to show that he had not taken possession of the land by illegal means.

To prove ownership, the court ruled, settlers must provide proof that they acquired control of the land using honest and legal means.

Beinisch also criticized Lesens for using legal proceedings to delay his evacuation from the land.

Many western jurisdictions - including the UK and most states in the United States - have rules similar to the Ottoman law. It's called adverse possession. Every first year law student in the US learned about them (or at least did when I went to law school). No court in the US would have issued a ruling like this (give Obama a few more years to stack the court and maybe they would).

But Beinish and Co. went to law school someplace else.

The good news (for once) is that we don't have three co-equal branches of government here. The Knesset is more equal than the other branches. In theory, the Knesset can overrule the court. Will they? Don't hold your breath.

Labels: Dorit Beinish, Judea and Samaria, Supreme Court