By Haresha, in Samaria, was founded in 1999, a legitimate and government supported town. In Haresha, families were originally all housed in caravans. After some years the Housing Ministry began developing the permanent infrustructure for the yishuv, including laying the groundwork for permanent housing. The investment of the Housing Ministry was supplemented by the support of other governmental offices and ministries, including the Defense Ministry, who appreciated Haraisha’s strategic importance overlooking Ramallah to the south and east and all of Gush Dan to the west.
Once the Housing Ministry had laid the groundwork for the permanent housing, the families invested their private funds to build their homes. Like almost everywhere in the country where ownership of land is not private, the final permits weren’t obtained before construction began. As is typical throughout Israel , the eight houses were built with the expectation that the final permits would be granted at the end of the long bureaucratic process. As is also typical, the Civil Administration automatically issued destruction orders on the buildings, which are then retroactively cancelled once the approval process is completed.
Peace Now discovered this technicality and turned it into a weapon in its war against the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria. It initiated a continual and ongoing campaign to have the “illegal dwellings” throughout Judea and Samaria destroyed. And it found an eager and willing partner in the Israeli Supreme Court. About four years ago, Peace Now filed a petition to force the state to execute the destruction orders pending on the permanent houses in Haraisha. The State responded to Peace Now’s appeal with weak equivocation. True, it asserted, the houses are illegal, but it isn’t high on the State’s list of priorities to destroy them for many and varied reasons. . . . It was the same answer that the State gave to Haraisha’s identical appeal against illegal Arab building in the neighboring village.
And wonder of wonders, the Supreme Court accepted the State’s position regarding the Arab building, but not the Jewish building. On July 7, 2009, the Supreme Court issued a precedential decision to intervene in the State’s manangment of state-owned lands by ordering it to set a time for the evacuation of the families and the destruction of their homes within four months.
The decision’s blatant discrimination in favor of Arab defendants and against Jewish ones is yet another stone in the long road the Supreme Court and its Leftist collaborators have paved leading the State along their preferred political path against the will of the people and their elected representatives.
There is a simple solution that would frustrate the fond wishes of Peace Now: the signature of the Defense Minister as the final remaining step in the long approval process for the yishuv. This is a simple procedural step since the land on which the yishuv is built is “adamot sekker”, ‘surveyed’ land that becomes state land when there are no private claimants to ownership. The land upon which Haraisha sits is indeed uncontested. Unfortunately, Defense Minister Ehud Barak shares the goals of Peace Now and is unwilling to affix his signature due to political considerations.
