Last update - 00:00 27/12/2007
State comptroller to investigate sale of contested Hebron house
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent
The Knesset State Control Committee decided Wednesday to instruct State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss to investigate the conduct of state authorities in the matter of a home taken over by Jewish settlers near Hebron.
A dispute exists on whether the settlers purchased the home legally or whether the authorizations they claim to have were acquired through illegal maneuvering.
MK Avshalom Vilan asked MK Zevulun Orlev, the committee chair, to also hold a discussion on the legality of settlement outposts, and expressed his support for a similar investigation on this issue by Lindenstrauss.
Ten months have passed since the settlers entered the three-story building, which covers an area of over 3,000 square meters. The $700,000 to buy the house came from people in New York who originally wished to remain anonymous.
But they are nurturing a grudge against Israeli bureaucracy, and this week, they decided to speak out: The buyer's son, a religious Jewish businessman from New York who agreed to be identified only as B., spoke with Haaretz about his plans for the house and his motives for buying it.
"My paternal great-grandfather lived in Hebron before the riots and the deportation of 1929," said B., referring to the murder of 67 Jews that summer by Arabs incited by false rumors of Jewish-orchestrated massacres of Arab Jerusalemites. "Part of my mother's family also lived there. They experienced the horrors of the massacre and knew many of the victims."
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