The Supreme Court on Wednesday discussed the petition filed by residents of Khan el-Ahmar against the evacuation and demolition of the illegal Bedouin village.
The judges - Hanan Meltzer, Yitzhak Amit and Anat Baron - made it clear that the main question is not whether to evacuate the village but where the residents will be evacuated to. During the hearing, the panel of judges tried to force the parties to reach a compromises.
Justice Meltzer stopped the hearing for two hours even though at the beginning of the hearing, the Palestinian Authority's attorneys declared that they were not prepared for any compromise on an alternative site. The State also announced that during the ten years in which the proceeding was being conducted, all the attempts at the settlement were rejected by the petitioners, and therefore the State requested that the petition be rejected out of hand.
At the end of the intermission, and during the hearing, the State announced that it was willing to set up family tents in the new neighborhood of Abu Dis to accommodate the evacuees of Khan el Ahmar, and that the alternative school would be connected to electricity and water.
However, in light of the pressures of Justice Meltzer, if the residents of Khan el-Ahmar agree to a voluntary and non-violent evacuation within a week, the State agreed to examine in the months following the evacuation the possibility of arranging an alternate site east of the Jewish town of Mitzpeh Yericho.
On the other hand, the Regavim legal organization and the residents of Kfar Adumim filed a separate petition calling for the immediate enforcement of the High Court's decision, handed down this past May, basing their demand on the principle ofres judicata" ("finality of judgement"): Once a decision is handed down, it is considered "a judicial act," and is final. The PA, they contend, should not be allowed to undermine a decision of the Supreme Court.
In addition to the fact that the outpost is located on state land and within the outline of the highway from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, the PA have made a new claim that the lands in Khan el Ahmar are privately owned, although no proof has been presented.
Despite the fact that the PA repeatedly stated that they refuse the alternative proposal, the panel headed by Justice Meltzer determined that within five days the state would present the main points of the proposed alternative plan subject to an agreed evacuation. The petitioners would then submit their position on the plan and could submit additional documents regarding the claim to ownership of the land