The Knesset’s State Control Committee voted Wednesday to ask State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss to prepare a special report regarding the government interference with regard to the Peace House in Hevron. 

“There is a feeling that authorities are violating basic ethical codes of conduct in order to promote a leftist political agenda with regard to the Peace House,” explained committee head MK Zevulun Orlev (NU/NRP).  “The comptroller’s check could clear the air and negate the suspicions.”

Members of the police and State Prosecutor's office testified before the committee that the building was indeed purchased by the Jewish Community of Hebron, and that the Arab who claims otherwise lied to the police and court.

Asked why the prosecutor's office still demands the Jews living in the Peace House be evicted, Brig.-Gen Yoav Mordechai, the director of the Civil Administration and a representative of the  Defense ministry, said that the police and prosecutor's office are  following a "State Directive." When asked who issued the directive they answered that it was former Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

MKs on the committee said that such a directive constitutes a political agenda being carried out on the “operational level” rather than the “state  level” and is thereby illegitimate.

The government has repeatedly attempted to expel 20 Jewish families from the Peace House in Hevron, labeling their presence in the building “an invasion.”  Jews say they purchased the building legally, and have accused the government of violating the law for political reasons. Earlier Wednesday, a Syrian Jewish man came forward, confirming that he had proof of ownership of the Peace House.

MK Orlev, MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu), MK Michael Eitan (Likud), MK Limor Livnat (Likud), MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima), and MK Nissim Ze'ev (Shas) voted in favor of giving the State Comptroller a mandate to investigate the case. MK Avshalom Vilan (Meretz) and MK Talab El-Sana (Ra’am Ta’al) voted against. 

Orlev criticized Vilan and El-Sana, saying, “Whoever voted against the comptroller’s investigation raises suspicions that he has something to hide.”

MK Vilan demanded that the Comptroller also look into the matter of the unauthorized hilltop communities in Judea and Samaria. He complained that “The State Control Committee has turned into a shofar (ram’s horn) for the right.”

MK Orlev responded that he welcomed an investigation into the so-called outposts for the same reason he sought one regarding Hevron’s Peace House. “We must dispel the suspicions that the government acted in an improper manner in this episode,” he said, “Similarly with the outposts, which were established with permission and jurisdiction.”

Osnat Mandel, head of the State Prosecution’s Supreme Court cases bureau, dismissed claims that foreign considerations contributed to the state’s refusal to accept the Jewish purchase of the Peace House. “There is no basis to such claims,” she said, though conceded that government policy under Defense Minister Amir Peretz was to take whatever measures were necessary to prevent the authorization of the transaction.

MKs protested Mandel’s demand that representatives of Hevron’s Jewish community be ejected from the committee meeting. According to the MKs, no similar demand was made when the PA Arabs who were disputing the building’s ownership attended the Knesset Interior Committee’s discussion of the matter half a year ago.

MK Orlev, the committee’s chair, summed up its conclusions. “When I hear a representative of the police state facts that contradict those given by the police representative before the Knesset Interior Committee in May, the need for the State Comptroller to investigate is strengthened. It must be in the joint interest of both the right and the left. We are speaking here about a decision made by a sub-committee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, headed by MK Otniel Schneller, a Kadima man, and there is no political matter here.”

Click here for a photo essay on Hevron's Peace House.