Barak stops demolition of homes built on Palestinian land

http://maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=36618

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday issued an order against demolishing homes built on privately owned Palestinian land in the West Bank settlement of Ofra.

He apparently froze the order saying that “the matter must be investigated before such action is taken,” Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

The order came in response to a petition submitted last June by residents of the nearby Ein Yavruz village and the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, insisting that Israel’s High Court of Justice force the state to evacuate the settlement.

The complaint noted nine illegal settlement structures built on private Palestinian land.

However, Barak said on Sunday that he will not carry out the order, considering that the illegal homes have been occupied populated for too long and are not illegal outposts (meaning they fall within a recognized illegal Israeli settlement).

Haaretz reported that Barak said the issue “must be examined in its entirety without rash decisions being made,” and only for the nine structures, according to an Israeli spokesperson.

Israeli Supreme Court Judge Edmund Levy last June rejected an order issued in response to the petition that forbade the illegal Ofra from continuing to build the nine houses, noting that they were apparently being built on Palestinian land.

Ten days later, Haaretz discovered that Israeli State Deputy Prosecutor Shai Nitzan had told the police not to implement the order. However, Nitzan apparently did not have the authority to reject such orders, instead having to turn to courts for clarification under Israeli law.

Meanwhile, Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem said in December of the same year that 58 percent of the entire settlement had been built on private land owned by Palestinians. Later, Palestinians proved through the official land registry that they owned it, making more than half of the settlement illegal, itself, a so-called illegal outpost.

But Ofra settlers said in response that they had purchased the land from Palestinians owners, but that they could not provide proof, as naming the allegedly previous owners would expose them to “Palestinian retribution attacks on the settlers,” Haaretz said.

In response to that, B’Tselem got a hold of 43 land registry records from the Israeli military’s Civil Administration department, showing that Palestinians from nearby villages owned the land in question.