The Supreme Court, at the State Prosecution's urging, issued a restraining order forbidding nine houses in Ofrah from being occupied or being built.
The radical left-wing organizations B'Tselem, Yesh Din and five local Arabs filed a suit two weeks ago, claiming that the land on which the homes were being built - in the town of Ofrah - belonged to the Arabs. The Arabs live in Ein Yabrud, between Ofrah and Beit El.
The State Prosecution accepted the Arabs' side and agreed that an unlimited restraining order be issued. No date has been set for a future hearing or final decision.
Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy handed down his ruling today (Thursday), banning Ofrah from continuing to build. He also ordered the police and Civil Administration to enforce the ruling.
Wallerstein: We're Studying It
Former Yesha Council head Pinchas Wallerstein, a founding resident of Ofrah, told Arutz-7, "We are currently examining the ruling and trying to understand it. It's a bit strange, in that it forbids us from moving people in to the houses - when we declared that people already live there!"
Asked if Ofrah plans to appeal, Wallerstein said facetiously, "If we were Bedouin, it would be easy to appeal, but since we're Jews, I'm not sure if the Supreme Court will allow it."
Left-Wing Aims High
The suit against the Jewish town is apparently just a first step in the attempt to uproot full-scale Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria. This is evident from the accompanying claim by one of the petitioning organizations that "the Civil Administration has confirmed that Ofra has no detailed zoning plans nor even its own area of jurisdiction."
The two organizations are affiliated with Peace Now, which has set itself the goal of ridding Judea and Samaria of all Jewish presence. They say that the entire town of Ofrah - population 2,600, and the first Jewish town in modern-day Binyamin (southern Samaria) - is essentially an "illegal outpost."
This, despite the fact that the town has received official recognition on many government levels, with funding and aid from various government ministries and bodies.