Supreme Court 'suggests' invalidating absentee property law used to confiscate land in 'east' Jerusalem

The Supreme Court has 'suggested' invalidating a 1950 law that allows the government to seize property in 'east' Jerusalem that has been abandoned by its former owners. The good news is that the court does not want to throw out the thousands of Israeli Jews who live on such properties, finally recognizing the reality that you can't expel people on that kind of scale.

The High Court of Justice issued a recommendation on Tuesday to the state, and to lawyers fighting to undo state confiscations of east Jerusalem land, that the court declare the use of a 1950 law to justify further confiscations unconstitutional.

While some of the petitioners, such as top lawyer Avigdor Feldman, were ready to embrace the recommendation as a long-delayed righting of what they considered decades of injustice, other petitioners, like NGO Adalah’s director Hassan Jabareen and lawyer Souhad Bishara, were dismayed, viewing the suggestion as permanently anchoring in law nearly 50 years of unjust confiscations.

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The court, presided over by Supreme Court President Asher D. Grunis, asked all of the parties to provide legal opinions on its suggestion to declare the law’s application in east Jerusalem unconstitutional, and to give their own ideas on whether the declaration should take effect only now, or retroactively from a different date.

Only two weeks ago, Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein had announced a major policy reversal in which the government would stop using the 1950 Absentee Property Law to confiscate east Jerusalem properties from Arabs for the benefit of Jews and the state.

The announcement had been designed to avoid this exact eventuality of throwing out the law’s application entirely, but may not have succeeded.

That state announcement followed a May High Court decision demanding it explain its position in using the 1950 law to confiscate land in east Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War.

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After the War of Independence, the law was used to take over homes and lands that Arabs had left empty or abandoned during or following the fighting.

The current controversy concerns to what extent the state can do the same in east Jerusalem, with all of the legal, political and international issues involved.

Reportedly the state has had inconsistent policies on using the law over the years, sometimes invoking it and sometimes not.

 It's like they never heard of eminent domain....