Court allows illegal Modi'in Ilit housing - Haaretz

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Thu., September 06, 2007 Elul 23, 5767

Israel Time: 02:07 (EST+7)

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Court allows illegal Modi'in Ilit housing

By Yuval Yoaz

Even though the East Matityahu neighborhood of the settlement of Modi'in Ilit was set up illegally on Palestinian lands, the houses that have already been built need not be dismantled, the High Court of Justice ruled yesterday.

It therefore canceled the injunction preventing the houses from being occupied that it issued in January 2006.

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In their ruling, Justices Eliezer Rivlin, Ayala Procaccia and Miriam Naor rejected the petition filed by the mayor of Bil'in, the Palestinian village on whose lands the neighborhood was built, and the Peace Now organization.

However, in an unusual move, they ordered the victors in the case to pay the petitioners' court costs of NIS 160,000, since "the initial petition filed on the matter was justified."

Despite the decision, it seems unlikely that a planned second stage of the neighborhood will now be built, due to the court's ruling on Tuesday ordering the separation fence near the settlement to be moved.

That ruling put the planned expansion outside the fence, making it unlikely to receive approval from the defense minister.

In their ruling, the justices explained that after the petition was filed in January 2006, the state revoked the initial planning process for the neighborhood, which had been clearly illegal, and started from scratch.

The second process, they wrote, "cured the flaws in the first process, and once the second plan was approved, the petitioners no longer had a just cause for complaint against the plan."

The main question facing the High Court was whether to order the demolition of the buildings that had been built illegally under the first plan, in view of the fact that they would have been legal under the second plan.

"My answer is no," Justice Miriam Naor wrote on behalf of the High Court. "This would be a disproportionate sanction under the circumstances. It would hurt innocent buyers, some of whom are already living in the apartments."

This, she added, is especially true for those persons who bought apartments from Heftsiba, a company that recently went bankrupt, as they have no way to receive reimbursements in order to buy property elsewhere.

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