The Supreme Court has ordered the nearly 100 residents of Beit HaShalom in Hevron – some 20 families and dozens of children – to leave the house within three days. If they do not do so, it is assumed that they will be forcibly removed, at a time and date to be chosen by the police and/or army.
The court also ordered the residents to pay 30,000 shekels – half to the State for court costs, and half to the former Arab owner.
The Supreme Court thus accepted the State’s position in full, ignoring a cassette recording of the Arab seller admitting to a good friend of his that he had sold the building to Jews.
The Court ruled that because of the “doubts” that have been raised regarding the occupants’ acquisition of the property – namely, the seller’s claim that he did not sell it - the situation should return to the previous status while the situation is resolved in a civil court.
The leaders of the Jewish Community in Hevron plan to convene for an urgent meeting this afternoon to plan their strategy for the next several days. Expulsion forces will not arrive any time in the next three days, according to the High Court ruling, and the Hevron pioneers will have to decide whether to issue a call for “reinforcements” to arrive after that time to try to rebuff an Amona-type eviction. Legal avenues – which can only include another appeal to the Supreme Court – will also be considered.
Orit Strook, on behalf of the Hevron Jewish Community, issued this statement:
“The Supreme Court’s decision to steal Beit HaShalom from its Jewish purchasers came with perfect timing: Right in between the story of Sodom and Gomorra, and the story of the purchase of Hevron by Avraham. Yesterday, Jews in synagogues around the world read aloud the story of the evil people of Sodom and their destruction - and this coming Sabbath we will read how Avraham purchased the Machpelah Cave in Hevron in which to bury his wife Sarah.
“Throughout the Beit HaShalom case, the entire judicial establishment has acted as in Sodom. In Sodom, too, there were courts, in which the judges enlisted all their wisdom in order to legalize injustice. The same has happened here: the laws and the precedents were all distorted unrecognizably for the purpose of legalizing the expulsion of the Jewish buyers from their property. To this end, the Court contradicted itself in every possible way. Both the judges and the Attorney General stood fast and did not allow the facts to confuse them.
“Just as the Patriarch Abraham did, we bought a piece of property in Hevron, and paid for it in full. We know that justice is on our side and that the house is ours. We presented all the evidence, but were met with impervious callousness and unwillingness to hold a fair judicial proceeding. Half the Knesset Members and sizeable portions of the public – those who saw and heard the recordings that we presented – know that an injustice has been done to us, and that the house has simply been stolen from us.
“The tens of thousands of people who are expected to arrive in Hevron this Sabbath to commemorate Avraham’s purchase of the Machpelah Cave, as every year at this time, can take comfort in the fact that when he bought it, there was no Supreme Court, Attorney General or government to take it from him.”
MK Uri Ariel, head of the National Union faction in the Knesset, said, “This ruling represents clear discrimination against the settlers, amidst nefarious ignoring of the evidence showing that the building is in fact theirs. The judges and [Attorney General Menachem] Mazuz and the police should thus not wonder why the public trust in them has dropped to the abyss – for they have earned it.”
Shas leader Eli Yishai, the Minster of Industry and Trade, said, “It is scandalous that the Court did not deal with the purchase contract itself or its legality, and it is outrageous that the Court would remove people when the purchase is clear and evident.”
MK Gilad Erdan's reaction was this: "The lack of willingness by the Attorney General and the Supreme Court to consider the clear evidence regarding the legitimate acquisition of the building is very regrettable, and creates a very bad public sense of injustice. It is a sharp blow to the public trust in our legal system.”<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
The Court based its decision largely on a case that occurred two years ago, regarding a building in Hevron known as Beit Shapira. That case, too, involved the Jewish purchase of a building from its Arab owners – and the court-ordered eviction of the Jewish residents despite the clear evidence that the house was in fact theirs. In what Strook called a "total distortion of precedents," the Court used the Beit Shapira case as an indication that the Jews "had found a system of writing purchase contracts and then unilaterally moving into the property, claiming that they had bought it, without the consent of the [other] party, thus creating a new situation…This system cannot receive a judicial stamp of approval.
Read here about the Beit Shapira case.