Tag: Bil’in

Before

Mohammed Khatib from the Popular committee against the wall being beaten on the back as he falls to the ground on the Demonstration against Israel’s Illeagel wall on friday May12th.
After

The judges, Barak, Prokachia, and Rivlin, presiding over the court case protesting the route of the wall in Bil’in village have not yet reached a decision.

In the last hearing, which took place May 14, 2006, the applicant, Bil’in village council, was represented by Michael Sfard, who argued that the wall is not designed to protect people, but rather to protect the investment of real estate sharks and to accommodate the expansion of settlements.

The eight lawyers representing the respondents- the state, Modi’in Illit council, and the real estate companies involved in the Matityahu Mizrakh Project- tried to convince the court that the route should remain as it is. Their main argument was that there is a government approved plan from 1999 for 1,500 housing units that occupies the same area that the current unapproved, illegal plan of 3,000 housing units of Matityahu Mizrakh East occupies.

Attorney Michael Sfard, representing the Bil’in village council, mentioned prior decisions from other cases as examples that the route of the wall should not be designed to include unapproved plans for settlements or illegal outposts. Nevertheless, the court seems very concerned with the fact that, illegal or not, Matityahu Mizrakh has already been built and 80 families have already moved in.

Bil’in village council has also filed another petition to the court, case 143/06, challenging the legality of the existence of the settlement because of a suspicious transfer of ownership of the land from the village to the realtors, by the state declaring the land state land only to later transfer it to the developers. A criminal investigation into the illegal building in Matityahu Mizrakh was instigated after the scope of the illegalities was exposed in court. Recently the villagers filed a third petition, number 3998/06, asking to cancel the designation of their lands as state property.

At some point during the latest hearing, Judge Prokachia, seemed to be convinced by the defendant arguments and asked Attorney Sfard to consider withdrawing the petition because she said it is without sufficient grounding in facts. Sfard refused. After continuous discussion, Sfard proposed to the court not to make a decision on this petition until a verdict is reached on the cases involving the legality of the settlement, case 143/06. The judge, Barak, seemed like he was accepting of this option, but did not make a decision immediately.

The state expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that currently, according to the courts request, there is an open gate in the fence that the villagers use to access their land. The state asked the court to allow them to set up an agricultural gate, which only farmers with individual permits will be allowed to cross. Sfard asked that the court to uphold the court injunction that was originally given when the court refused to freeze the construction of the wall in it’s current route, saying that all the villagers can have access to their agricultural land.

The State’s lawyers said that Palestinians who enter the gate then have access to the settlement and Israel. One of the solutions that Sfard brought up is to close the gate on the settlement instead of closing the gate on Bil’in.

The judge, Barak, proposed that the two sides agree on further limitations to be imposed without preventing completely the movement of Palestinians over this land. No decision was reached about this either at this point in time and the issue has been left open.

For more information:
Muhammad Khatib 0545-573-285

Today (May 14th, 2006), a new petition (HCJ 3998/06), the third in number, was filed at the High Court of Justice, on behalf of the village Bil’in.

In this petition, the Court is asked to order the person in charge of government property in the West Bank to annul two declarations, one in 1990 and the other in 1991, in which he declared 900 dunams of the lands of Bil’in (now West of the barrier) as “government property” – i.e., State Lands.

The petition also asks the Court to issue an order nisi, ordering the Military Commander, the person in charge of government property, the Fund and the companies which built in Matityahu East to explain why, in their opinion, the declaration should not be annulled. Finally the Court is asked to issue a temporary injunction that will freeze all the new planning procedures of the Matityahu East neighborhood, until a final verdict in the petition.

Today (May 14) Supreme Court Judge Salim Jubran ordered the State and the other respondents to respond to the request for a temporary injunction in seven days, and to the petition itself within 30 days.

The petition was filed, on behalf of the village Council, Peace Now and 21 of the people of Bil’in who own lands in the declaration zone, by lawyers Michael Sfard and Husein Abu-Husein.

The new petition is a direct result of the former two petitions filed by the village Council: The anti-wall petition (HCJ 8414/05), which was heard today; and the petition against the Matityahu East neighborhood (HCJ 143/05), as a result of which building in the compound has been completely frozen.

Now the people of Bil’in are challenging the Israeli Court and asking him not just to remove the barrier from their lands or to stop the construction of Matityahu East, but to annul the procedures through which the State took their lands unlawfully, 15 years ago.

Main Points of the petition
The petition is based on material discovered during the procedures in the other two petitions. This material indicates that the cause for the declarations concerning government property was not the claim that these lands are uncultivated and hence lack owners (as done in dozens of other villages throughout the West Bank), but the claim of the Fund for the Redemption of Land – a private company from the settlement Kdumim, which purchases lands from Palestinians and gives them to settlers – for having bought the lands of Bil’in.

The State cooperated fully with this private company, and declared some 900 dunams of the lands of Bil’in as State lands, while hiding the fact that the Fund claims to have bought these lands. By doing this, the State bypassed orders in several West Bank laws, which specify the procedures in which purchased land can be registered on the name of the buyer. Through these procedures, careful examinations are being done with respect to the selling deals, the identity of the seller, the question did he has any lands in the area and if yes, how many, and more. These procedures are being done publicly, so that each person from Bil’in who claims to have ownership on the lands of part of them, has the right to object. The Fund said they wanted to hide the deal in order to protect the lives of the sellers, who feared they would be murdered after selling lands to settlers. But in the petition, the main reasons for this are exposed: through the illegal cooperation with the State, the Fund managed to avoid the lengthy and expensive procedures associated with registering the land as its own property, procedures which often lead to the conclusion that the purchase deal was false, and to the result that the Fund is left without the lands which allegedly it has bought.