Israel Matzav

Report: Ulpana developer knew that homes were built on private land

Haaretz is reporting that the developer of the Ulpana neighborhood in Beit El, which the Supreme Court has ordered destroyed on July 1 because it was allegedly built on 'private Palestinian land,' 'knew' that the development was built on private land (Israel Radio reported this as the developer saying that the developer admitted that his company did not purchase the land, which is not the same as knowing that he need to purchase it).

Yoel Tsur, CEO of the company that built the neighborhood and owns 24 of the 30 houses that the High Court of Justice has ordered razed, admitted in a police interrogation three years ago that it was built on land whose purchase was never finalized.

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In 2009, police questioned Tsur under caution. His statements, reported here for the first time, reveal that settlement officials always knew the location was problematic.

Tsur said that in the mid-1990s, Amana, the settlement movement's construction arm, tried to purchase the plots in question, which are listed in the Civil Administration's land registry as Lot 34 and Lot 39. "In June 2000, a contract was signed to sell Lot 34 at a price of $6,000 per dunam, or $183,000 in total," he said.

That, however, was two years after construction at the site began.

Moreover, even according to Tsur, the contract covered only Lot 34. "I was told, I don't remember by whom, that Lot 39 was in the process of being purchased and that the deal would be completed," he said.

Asked by police whether it was completed, he answered "I don't know." Amana, he added, is the one that dealt with the land issue.

But don't go blaming Tsur or Amana just yet.

Asked why he built without a permit from either the local council or the Civil Administration, Tsur told the police, "Since the Housing Ministry was a partner to planning the houses, to financing the infrastructure - electricity, sewage, water roads, sidewalks, walls, buttresses, railings - I thought in my innocence that there was no obstacle to building the houses ... A plan was submitted to the Beit El local council, and when the Housing Ministry began financing infrastructure for the project, I thought that in practice, the process had been approved."

And to give you some idea of how difficult it is to buy land in Judea and Samaria:

Police also concluded that the seller of Lot 34 - which Amana finally tried to register in its name only after the High Court petition was filed in 2008 - didn't actually own it. Last September, four months after the state promised to demolish the houses and three days before a High Court hearing on the case, Amana challenged that conclusion in the Jerusalem District Court. It will hear the suit in July.

As far as I am aware, the central registry for land in Judea and Samaria only started in 1967. It is difficult to determine who owned land before then and whether documents are authentic.

But at this point, I don't believe it matters. Most Western countries have a property law concept called adverse possession, which says that if you are in possession of a piece of property for a certain number of years, even if you had no right to be there in the first place, you have 'earned' the right to stay there. (By the way, the concept is an ancient Jewish concept that dates to the Mishna - see Bava Bathra Chapter 3). Given that construction on this property started in 1998 with government approval, and that the Supreme Court case was first filed in 2008, the people who have lived there since the early part of the last decade ought to be allowed to stay. The government ought to step up to the plate and compensate the Arab land owners to the extent that they can prove their ownership. Throwing people out of their homes under these circumstances makes no sense.

Labels: Arab land sales to Jews, Beit El, Judea and Samaria

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:32 AM