Gov’t to Court: Settlements law balances land rights of settlers and Palestinians
The government filed its legal brief with the High Court of Justice late Monday defending the February Settlements Regulations law, which retroactively legalized unauthorized building by Jewish settlers on private Palestinian land in exchange for compensation.
The brief, filed by a private law firm – since Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit has sided with the group of NGO petitioners and declared the law unconstitutional – argued that the law found the right balance between settler and Palestinian rights to the West Bank areas in dispute.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said that the law “responded to the racism of the Palestinian Authority, which sentenced those [Palestinians] selling land to Jews to death.”
In the brief, the government contended that only those settlers who built on vacant land in good faith – meaning they did not realize the land was owned by private Palestinians – can have units they built legalized. Furthermore, the law is said to apply only to those units, even if formally unauthorized, which the state in some way supported informally.
The brief also asserted that paying just compensation to Palestinian landowners – who in any event had left the land vacant – or offering them alternate lands is standard practice in many countries.
“The Israeli government rejects the petitioners’ attempt to intimidate the government and its officials on the grounds that the law constitutes a violation of international law,” the government said. “The Israeli government rejects the attempt to impose on the State of Israel different and more stringent standards than those accepted in the world.”
The brief also called the law crucial for natural growth of West Bank Jewish communities.
Mandelblit and the many NGOs that petitioned to strike the law as unconstitutional have responded that it is illegal under international law, violates the premise of all peace negotiations that Israel cannot simply annex West Bank land, and violates Israel’s domestic law, which does not allow taking land even for compensation from noncitizens, who do not get to vote for the government choosing to take the land.