Petition against new Amihai settlement retracted
Yesh Din has retracted a petition it filed with the High Court against the boundaries of the proposed Amihai settlement in the West Bank, which is supposed to become the new home for the former residents of the destroyed Amona outpost.
The non-governmental organization filed a petition asking the court to order that proceedings for the demarcation of settlement jurisdictions be made public and transparent. The group included claims about the boundaries of Amihai in its petition.
Although the attorney general agreed to “refresh” administrative procedures on defining the municipal boundaries of settlements, the court did not view Yesh Din’s claims about Amihai favorably and the organization has now withdrawn its petition.
According to the Regavim pro-settlements organization, the court accepted that most of the land on which Amihai will be situated was declared to be state land in 1981. The land was allocated to the Benjamin Regional Council and most of it was appended to the municipal jurisdiction of the Shiloh settlement.
The State Attorney’s Office rejected Yesh Din’s claims that Amihai includes private Palestinian land, although it acknowledged that the new settlement’s municipal boundaries block access to some parcels of private Palestinian land.
The office said, however, that the Palestinian landowners will still be able to use those lands by coordinating in advance with the relevant authorities and in accordance with the prevailing security situation.
“Yesh Din knew well that this land has been state land for 40 years and therefore, at the end of the day, it became clear that this was a frivolous petition whose only purpose was to jam a stick in the wheels of the bulldozers,” said Regavim attorney Boaz Arzi.
Two petitions from separate organizations, however, are still pending against the establishment of Amihai.