Land rights
Regarding “Amona’s last stand?” (Frontlines, December 9), the whole business of the bill now proposed in the Knesset to legalize 4,000 settlement homes, and the separate issue of the Amona homes, confuses me.
I thought that originally, the Israeli government supported the establishment of Amona, and the fact that it was on Palestinian land was not known. Then I read that Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit had “cautioned that the bill is unconstitutional, violating both Israeli and international law. It runs counter to 40 years of High Court of Justice rulings forbidding settlement construction on private Palestinian property.”
International law concerns actions between states, not laws within sovereign states. (And I didn’t know that Israel has a constitution.) The same court that forbids building can allow it, no? Private property is not inviolate.
There is such a thing as eminent domain. In the US, a community seized the private property of an auto dealership and gave it to a motel builder. The Supreme Court upheld the action. Of course, the justices did not have to be politically correct or consider what some other country might think. They did what they thought was best for the community.
The High Court of Justice’s 40 years of rulings are not part of the Ten Commandments. They might be the product of a left-leaning judiciary and part of a failed past. PHILIP BRIEFF Jerusalem
The currently ubiquitous phrase “private Palestinian property” in your newspaper might be a holdover from the pre-state British Mandate period regarding disputed/occupied territory. But those days are gone forever.
“Private Palestinian property” mistakenly seems to apply to the entirety of the historic Judean/ Israelite Jewish kingdoms that contain identifiable ruins of entire cities, cemeteries, walls, temples, coins, written inscriptions, fragments, legal documents, land-holding laws and national governing rules. These are referred to in detail in much more than the Bible, histories of Josephus and others – they are referred to in the boastful lists of conquerers and in extensive literary sources, for starters.
Since some areas are now sub judice, it is questionable why the above-mentioned phrase seems to appear in your newspaper despite all the evident facts on the ground, legends, stories, testaments, songs and, of course, traditional prayers and Psalms of actual identifiable locations to the contrary. Look up “Jerusalem.” ESTER ZEITLIN Jerusalem
Jeff Barak ought to have his reality checked (“The settler tail wagging the dog,” Reality Check, December 5). Anyone should know that the concept of private Palestinian land is a misnomer.
The concept relates to a unilateral decision made by the Israeli government regarding land Israel won from Jordan in the 1967 War. It is most certainly not land stolen from any particular Palestinian. Before it can be used, it goes through an exhaustive notification process in which any possible owner can make his claim known.
Barak also knows that without a left-leaning Supreme Court and a bunch of leftist NGOs, spurious Palestinian claims would have never been advanced. The simple issue that no taxes have ever been paid on any of this land would mean it reverts to ownership by the State of Israel under applicable law.
So why the constant harping about “private Palestinian land”? Could it be because Barak is a serial hater of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the settlers, or does he really think that siding against Amona will bring peace? MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ
Houston