As I pen these lines, I have before me the contract signed in June 2000 between the owners of the land in Beit El upon which stand the five apartment houses slated for destruction - or removal to another site – and the Amana Land Reclamation Movement, attesting to the purchase of the land and to payment for it.
The detailed contract is 22 pages long. It was transferred for perusal at the time to the Civil Admiistration, and the officials in charge there checked it out and certified its truth, but asked the purchasers to postpone the last signing (closing), so that the seller would not be murdered by his brothers in accordance with the Muslim Wakf's blanket sentence for any Arab who sells his land to a Jew.
Much later, the seller's distant relatives filed suit at the Shiite court in Ramallah, claiming that they are the legal heirs to the property. The Shiite Court ratified and accepted their affidavit. We do not know what proofs they brought to back up their claims, and there is a sneaking suspicion that the Wakf did so to prevent the land from being sold to Jews.
At any rate, an elderly Arab who is thoroughly familiar with all the land in the area, has testified orally and most emphatically, that the land belonged to the seller, who is the rightful heir to it.
Years later, after the neighborhood had been built, the government's legal department brought the certification of the Arab Shiite Court in Ramalllah as proof that the land had been sold by someone who was not its real owner.
To the best of our knowledge, no other evidence was shown to the Israeli Supreme Court concerning the ownership of the land involved.
An elderly Arab who is thoroughly familiar with all the land in the area, has testified orally and most emphatically, that the land belonged to the seller, who is the rightful heir to it.
Let us spare the reader the misery of an extended discussion of the dubious significance of Arab claims to ownership of lands that have never been touched, and of how King Hussein, [who only occupied them for the short period from 1949-1967 and relinquished all claims to them in 1996, ed.] handed them outin the early '60's, without the authority to do so, to several families who found favor in his eyes.
With regard to the issue at hand, it was made clear to those who built the neighborhood that there was no building permit in hand. As far as that is concerned, this is the time to make it very clear: those who built the neighborhood indeed knew that the construction was being done without a permit, but that was because the land was outside the registered, zoned area of Beit El and had to undergo a zoning process first.
It seems to me that there is a problem in the fact that there was no contract closing, but this was not a matter that affected the builders.
Many houses in this country have been constructed before the zoning laws are complete. In fact, some of the kibbutzim and moshavim in Israel still have not finished the zoning process. I think that Beit Shemesh, a city that has been standing for decades, received the last zoning signature [from the planning committee, ed.] only a few years ago.
The Ulpana hill was built with the agreement of the head of the local council who said that he would work to get the zoning arranged. It never entered anyone's mind to detroy an entire neighborhood because its registered zoning rights were not completed.
In the media brouchaha that was created around the Ulpana judgment, it was claimed that those who built the neighborhood were warned that they were bulding on land owned by Arabs.
If this were correct, one could find a modicum of justice in the Supreme Court decision. But it is not correct. The claim of ownership brought by the relatives of the seller is fairly recent; it only came about after the neighborhood was standing. Whle it was being built, the only issue was the zoning [which is common in Israel , as noted above, ed.]
Lumping the two issues together, the zoning and the ownership, is the source from which this terrible judgment stems..
However, under stems there are always roots. Those roots allow the main stem to grow.
And in Israel (as wel as in the Northern Islamic Movement within the green line), there is a growing criminal system run by the Wakf, that permits itself to pass judgment in its courts that are death sentences for those who sell land or houses to Jews.
The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayyad is the executor of these sentences.
I myself was once present at the secret escape of an Arab seller who was in disguise so that he could be spirited away over the sea.
We have allowed much Arab blood to be spilled, that of those who have sold land to Jews and that of those suspected of selling to Jews.
Our government and its various branches, including the security forces, have remained silent. The Chief Justices of the Supreme Court – Barak, Beinisch and Gronis – know about it, know that because of this, land purchase contracts are not completed, but they ,too, remain silent, and act as though everything is as it should be.
They have wrested land, again and again, from the hands of bona fide purchasers, land that was purchased in good faith - in Hevron, even houses that were redeemed by Jews, all the while justifying themselves by saying that the last signatures were unclear, i.e. that there was no closing.
And now Gronis has outdone himself, for he knows the truth, and along with his two fellow justices , has passed the judgment that uproots hundreds of people, most of them children, from their homes. This group includes IDF officers, who endanger their lives constantly for the security of this country, and bereaved families who have lost loved ones to terror and war. They will go to caravans and an unknown future.
Perhaps, by doing this, he has prepared the ground for violence, if the residents decide to fight the decision. Remember that in Amona there were 250 injured in hospital emergency rooms and that one young boy was brain dead, while many were handicapped for life including a top officer from the paratroop corps.
Gronis knows exactly what he is doing, that he is collaborating with the Islamic Wakf. He know exactly how much 'honor' he has bestowed upon the Supreme Court by doing so and what kind of 'justice' he has shown that the High Court represents.
Let us not allow him to roll his eyes innocently heavenward.
(Translated by Rochel Sylvetsky from the Hebrew Makor Rishon newspaper with the permission of HaRav Meidan)
