The High Court Tuesday told the government to destroy the Migron community, home to 47 families in northern Samaria, by next March.
The tough-worded ruling, if implemented, would force the expulsion and relocation of the families, some of whom have lived in Migron for more than a decade. Migron has been a constant target for Peace Now, which has claimed that Jewish homes are located on property belonging to PA Arabs.
Migron has explained that Jordan, which occupied Samaria after the Arabs lost the War for Independence of Israel in 1949, arbitrarily divided up areas, including Migron, among Arab families, some of whom never even knew the lands had been given to them, In many cases, it is not known where the supposed owners live.
Although the land never was recorded as being purchased, the courts have ruled in favor of left-wing groups who filed the suit.
Previous negotiations with Defense Minister Ehud Barak have delayed the death sentence as the government and Migron residents tried to work out an agreement.
The three-justice panel, headed by court President Dorit Beinisch, put an end to any compromise, which was supposed to also involve three homes that the court recently ruled be demolished even though Peace Now, which instituted legal proceedings,withdrew its petition after realizing that the case was faultily prepared and it could not prove Arab ownership for these specific homes. It decided to wait for the general ruling on Migron.
The court on Tuesday said said there is “no practical timetable” for carrying out previous decisions by the court that Migron be demolished and its residents expelled and transferred.
Citing what the justices said was almost no chance of any counter proposal for relocation being carried out, the panel ruled, “There is no justification for the continuation of the current illegal situation of the existence of the ‘outpost.”
The court charged that Migron is “one of the most exceptional cases of the establishment of illegal outposts that the court has dealt with.
“We have divided to issue a ruling that obligates the government to ‘evacuate’ Migron, and we have no choice but to tell the residents of Migron that they must agree to relocate or be considers as violators of the law.”
The government had offered the residents a neighborhood of their own attached to an existing community. That would take years to build and the residents did not accept the offer, not wanting to set a precedent of agreeing to abandon existing communities and because they felt the suit was unjust, having settled in Migron with government help.