Jews allowed to move into contested building in Hebron
Defense Minister Moshe "Boogie" Yaalon has allowed Jews to
move into Hebron's Peace House, a building that was purchased on their behalf by an American Jew ten years ago. Israel's Far Left Meretz party is warning that the move will lead to violence, and its followers will do all they can to ensure that prediction comes true.
The move expands Jewish property-holding in the section of the city
under Israeli military and civil control. It is located in a
Palestinian neighborhood just outside the Kiryat Arba settlement, on the
major road that leads to the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Morris Abraham, a Jew from Brooklyn, had
purchased the building from its Palestinian owners over a decade ago.
Claiming ownership, settlers initially moved into Beit Hashalom in
March 2007 even though the Defense Ministry had not authorized the
purchase or given them the permits to live there.
The Palestinian owners argued that the sale, in any event was fraudulent and turned to the courts.
In December 2008, when Ehud Barak was defense minister, he
forcibly evacuated the building pending the completion of legal appeals. Some
600 Border Police officers and IDF soldiers participated in the
evacuation, in which four officers and 23 Jewish activists were lightly
to moderately injured. Additionally, at least 20 Palestinians were
injured in clashes with settlers in the area of the building.
In the weeks leading to the evacuation, extremist Jewish activists
vandalized the cemetery and the Palestinian homes next to Beit Hashalom.
In 2012, after
initial court victories by settlers, Barak took the
first steps toward authorization of their purchase of the structure. He
halted those efforts, however, after Palestinian appeals returned the
matter to the court.
In March, the High Court of Justice ruled that the purchase of the
four story apartment building was legal, but only on Sunday, did
Ya'alon grant Jewish families from Hebron permission to move in.
Already on Sunday afternoon hours after receiving permission, did the families begin to move their things in.
...
Meretz faction chairman Ilan Gilon said Ya'alon may be responsible for bloodshed as a result of his decision.
Gilon criticized the defense minister's decision on Beit Hashalom,
saying its "more spit in the public's face from the extreme right-wing
government, which decides during a crisis in talks with the Palestinians
to strengthen settlers in Hebron."
This is long past due.
Labels: Arab land sales to Jews, Ehud Barak, Hebron, Judea and Samaria, land purchases, Moshe Yaalon
Blue-ribbon panel: Israelis have legal right to settle all of Judea and Samaria
A blue-ribbon panel established by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, has concluded that
Jews have a legal right to settle throughout Judea and Samaria under 'international law.'
The committee was established by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in efforts to determine and cement the legal status of the outposts in Judea and Samaria, with an emphasis on communities that were not built on privately owned Palestinian land but their status was still in doubt due to legal bureaucracy.
The committee issued its report on Tuesday, which was subsequently handed over to Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein. In the report, Levy wrote that "upon completing the committee's tasks, and considering the testimonies heard, the basic conclusion is that from an international law perspective, the laws of 'occupation' do not apply to the unique historic and legal circumstances surrounding Israel's decades-long presence in Judea and Samaria."
"Likewise," the report said, "the Fourth Geneva Convention [relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War] on the transfer of populations does not apply, and wasn't intended to apply to communities such as those established by Israel in Judea and Samaria."
In the part of the report that criticizes Israel's actions, the retired justice wrote that "dozens of new neighborhoods have been erected, without government authorization and at times without a contiguous link to the mother community. Several were built outside the legal jurisdiction allotted to the community. This prevalent phenomenon has required large amounts of funding therefore the committee finds it hard to believe that it was done without the government's knowledge."
In conclusion, the report stated that "we have discovered a phenomenon within the Israeli settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria that does not befit a country that upholds the rule of law. From now on, it must be made very clear to the proponents of the settlement enterprise and to the political echelon that they are to operate only within the confines of the law, and the various law enforcement institutions must decisively enforce the law in the future."
The committee's recommendations include the following: The government must clarify its position on the issue of Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria to prevent varying interpretations of its policy; a new community will only be built after the government or an authorized ministerial committee has approved it; the expansion of a community outside the bounds of its authorized jurisdiction must first be approved by the defense minister or a ministerial committee on settlements, in coordination with the prime minister.
On the other hand, the committee declared that the encouragement provided by the government to the settlement enterprise constituted authorization. According to the committee, communities that were built on land owned by the state, or privately owned Israeli land, with the help of government bodies could not be classified as "unauthorized" due to the absence of an official government decision to authorize them. The very assistance provided by the government in their establishment constitutes implicit authorization.
That last paragraph likely covers the vast majority of the so-called 'illegal outposts.'
Read the whole thing.
Labels: international law, Judea and Samaria, land purchases
In bid to stave off expulsion, American Jewish philanthropist buys 80% of Migron lands
In a bid to stave off the expulsion of the outpost's Jews, an
American Jewish philanthropist has purchased the land on which 66 of the 70 buildings in Migron sit at a cost of 'hundreds of thousands' of dollars (Hat Tip:
Sunlight NM via Twitter). That comes to about 80% of the land.
In a last-minute attempt to prevent the evacuation of Migron, the largest illegal outpost in Judea and Samaria, representatives of the outpost recently bought more than 80 percent of its land from Palestinians claiming ownership over it, Israel Hayom has learned.
Residents of Migron hope that the move will now render unnecessary the High Court's order to evacuate the outpost by 1 August.
According to a source involved in the transaction, the land was acquired "in a completely legal and valid manner." While representatives of the community have refrained from publishing details of the transaction, the source said "more than one seller" was involved.
Both sides involved in the deal have also kept the identify of the donor secret, but revealed that he is a Jewish-Zionist American philanthropist who paid hundreds of thousand dollars for the land.
The deal was kept under such heavy secrecy that even Migron residents did not know all of the details of the transaction and were only likely to find out about it on Thursday.
Sounds like Irving Moskowitz to me. If it's him, more power to him.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Judea and Samaria, land purchases, Migron, outposts
Land dispute in Hebron
Last week, a group of Jews from the Hebron area entered an abandoned house, which they claim to have bought from its 'Palestinian owners.' They have proof. On Sunday night, a group of 'Palestinians' and their Leftist Jewish cheerleaders entered another house in Hebron and
barricaded themselves inside. Both houses are near the Machpeila Cave.
Security forces on Sunday evening detained two out of some 30 protesters who barricaded themselves inside an abandoned house near the Shavei Hebron yeshiva in Hebron.
The group, which included some 30 Palestinians and left wing activists, marched toward the Romano house, where the yeshiva is located, in protest of several dozen settlers who barricaded themselves in a Hebron house last week, claiming they purchased it from its Palestinian owner.
The settlers claim that they have all the legal documents attesting to the purchase of what has been dubbed the "Machpelah House."
Police and IDF forces encircled the barricaded house and declared it a restricted military zone. Shortly after, the protesters dispersed and police forces detained two activists.
"We broke into the house to expose the double standard of the Israeli legal system," said Issa Amar, one of the Palestinian activists who was arrested.
"On Thursday settlers took over a house in Hebron, but no one cleared them out. We weren’t armed – we entered the house legally," Amar noted, adding that the house used to be an IDF post, but is now standing empty.
Earlier on Sunday, the residents of the Machpelah House presented the Civil Administration with the deed of the house, which has to be approved by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Likud ministers are scheduled to convene Monday in order to discuss the transaction.
"We are happy that they didn't leave the decision up to Barak, who is the one who forcefully evicted the house of peace. We hope that the deal will be approved tomorrow and we can celebrate Passover with the rest of Israel," said the residents of the Machpelah house.
For those who have forgotten Beit HaShalom (the House of Peace) in Hebron, go
here, where you will even see video of the Arab being handed money by the Jewish purchasers. It didn't help. They were expelled from the house anyway.
P.S. Yes, I fell asleep on the computer last night.
Labels: Hebron, Judea and Samaria, land purchases
Not only did Jews not steal Palestine, they bought it
With the 'Palestinians' selling the world on the notion that the Jews 'stole' Palestine, Daniel Pipes recounts something that is obvious, but only to those of us who grew up with blue and white
pushkes in our houses like the one at left: Not only did the Jews not steal Palestine,
they bought it (Hat Tip:
Daily Alert).
Ironically, the building of Israel represents almost the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history. Understanding why requires seeing Zionism in context. Simply put, conquest is the historical norm. Governments everywhere have been established through invasion and nearly all states came into being at someone else’s expense. No one is permanently in charge; everyone’s roots trace back to somewhere else.
...
Against this tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, mercantile rather than military. Two great empires, the Ottomans and the British, ruled Eretz Yisrael. In contrast, Zionists lacked military power. They could not possibly achieve statehood through conquest.
Instead, they purchased land. Acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house, lay at the heart of the Zionist enterprise until 1948. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine “to assist in the foundation of a new community of free Jews engaged in active and peaceable industry,” was the key institution — and not the Haganah, the clandestine defense organization founded in 1920.
Zionists also focused on the rehabilitation of what was barren and considered unusable. They not only made the desert bloom, but drained swamps, cleared water channels, reclaimed wasteland, forested bare hills, cleared rocks, and removed salt from the soil. Jewish reclamation and sanitation work precipitously reduced the number of disease-related deaths.
Only when the British Mandate of Palestine gave up power in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush and expel the Zionists, did the latter take up the sword in self-defense and go on to win land through military conquest. Even then, as the historian Efraim Karsh demonstrates in Palestine Betrayed, most Arabs fled their lands; exceedingly few were forced off.
So especially those of you who did not grow up with a JNF pushke in your house, read the whole thing, follow the links and learn how the Jewish people - unlike every other people in the World - did not shed blood to win our land.
Labels: Jewish National Fund, land purchases
Iran buying Lebanese Christian properties
Last spring, there were rumors of an attempt by Syria and Hezbullah to
wall off the Bekaa Valley and use it as a weapons zone.
And in August 2007, I reported that Hezbullah was buying land north of the Litani River and turning it into a
no-go zone. At the time, I cited a report from Charles Levinson that Hezbullah was attempting to connect its stronghold in southern Lebanon with the Bekaa Valley.
There are, however, more sinister accusations. Jumblatt and other Druze leaders have been most vocal with accusations that Hezbollah has a grand plan to Shiitize what was heretofore a mixed Christian-Druze area in an attempt to create a contiguous swath of land connecting the south with Hezbollah’s other stronghold in Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley.
Getting rid of this irksome band of Christian and Druze villages would not only split the Druze off from their ancestral home in the Chouf Mountains, but would also mean weapons from Syria would have unfettered access to Hezbollah in the south without passing through potentially unfriendly territory. See the map below which has been floating around various anti-Hezbollah circles and claims, rather dubiously I think, to depict Hezbollah’s secret plans for a Shiite state inside Lebanon.
See the map at top left (the same one referred to by Levinson as "below"), and go back and
read the whole thing to refresh your memory.
In light of the above,
this report from Al-Arabiyah, which indicates that Iran is buying up Christian lands in Lebanon, should not be too surprising (Hat Tip:
Elder of Ziyon).
The recent rise in Iranian purchases of property owned by Christians stirred controversy in Lebanon as the Islamic republic is accused of dividing the country along sectarian lines and embarking on a Shiite infiltration scheme.
The Shiite purchase of Christian land in Lebanon drove Lebanese Labor Minister Botros Harb to submit to the cabinet a draft law that prohibits the sale of land across religions.
Harb’s proposal mirror Lebanese fears of a scheme that enables Iran of exercising growing economic influence in Lebanon through Shiite businessmen who buy lands and houses owned by Christians and take advantage of Lebanon’s free market economy.
The draft law, of which AlArabiya.net obtained a copy, consists of six articles and an explanation of the way in which they are not in violation of the Lebanese constitution.
The first article of the law stipulates that sale of property should only be among members of the same religion for the coming 15 years and that any contracts that violate this law should be annulled. This includes what the law describes as “fake contracts” where the purchasing party is not the real beneficiary of the deal.
According to the draft, those who violate this law whether by sale, purchase, or mediation will face five to 10 years in jail and fined double the price of the sold property.
According to Lebanese economic expert Dr. Ghazi Wazni, the law is unlikely to pass.
In addition to economic drawbacks, Wazni argued that the law will have an opposite result to what it aims at since it will enhance divisions and make owning property dependent on religion.
When asked about Iran, Wazni replied that Iranian investments are concentrated in the south and that he did not notice the same happening in other parts of Lebanon.
“However, Shiite investments have been growing in many parts of Lebanon.”
Wazni concluded by saying that it is very unlikely that Harb’s proposal will be approved.
“The possibility of approving this law or putting it on the cabinet’s agenda is zero percent.”
So is this an attempt to expel Christians from Lebanon? (Where are the people who are selling the land going?) Is it an attempt to clear militarily strategic areas of non-Muslims in preparation for war (as the attempt to link the south to the Bekaa clearly was)? One thing this probably isn't is the innocent machinations of a free-market economy.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Bekaa Valley, Iran, land purchases, Southern Lebanon
