It is difficult to escape the sense that the Israel Lands Administration, a governmental body, worked hand in glove with the settlers' non-profit organization Ateret Cohanim to take control of the 30-dunam (7.5-acre) plot in East Jerusalem known as Kerem Hamufti. (See article by Meron Rapoport, Page 4.) This plot, one of the most expensive and desirable in East Jerusalem, is located on the slopes of the Sheikh Jarra neighborhood, facing the ridge of Mt. Scopus.
The area is named for the grand mufti of Jerusalem during the British Mandate, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who aided the Nazis in the Second World War and whose family owned the land. After the Six-Day War, the government announced it intended to expropriate the land for public use, but it was only last March - nearly 40 years later - that the state carried out the expropriation, by force of an order issued by then finance minister Abraham Hirchson.
The conflict over the land is between the Arab Hotels Company, which argues that its claim to the land has been recognized, and the ILA, which leased the plot some years ago to Ateret Cohanim for "agricultural purposes."
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Since the 1980s, a group of yeshiva students with religious-nationalist views along the lines of Gush Emunim has conducted a campaign to acquire houses and land for Jewish settlement in the Arab neighborhoods of the eastern part of the capital. The best known of the NGOs are Elad, which operates in Ir David, and Ateret Cohanim, which settles the families of yeshiva students in Arab neighborhoods. Governmental bodies such as the National Housing Company of Israel (Amidar), the Custodian of Absentee Property, the ILA, certain ministries and the Jewish National Fund have issued funds to these NGOs.
Following complaints about the improper funding received by these NGOs, an interministerial committee was appointed in August 1992 by justice minister David Libai and finance minister Abraham Shochat to examine the issue. The committee, headed by Justice Ministry director general Haim Klugman, submitted its findings to the cabinet within a few weeks. The report showed that tens of millions of shekels had been transferred illegally and with no oversight to the settlers associations. Senior government officials and government companies collaborated to aid the settlers, the report indicated, in what may have been criminal activity.
The goal of the national-religious NGOs in purchasing property in East Jerusalem is ideological and political, but that does not justify breaking the law or the standards of good government. Even though many years have passed since the publication of the Klugman Report, it would appear that little has been done to right the wrongs it documented. Now, too, it seems that supposedly law-abiding governmental bodies - in this case the ILA - continue to operate like agents of these NGOs, waging for them the war of taking over Arab property in an underhand manner. In other words, the practice of placing the settlers above the law, which has been discussed at length in the context of the West Bank, has reached East Jerusalem.
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