'Absentee' land slated for E. Jerusalem homes - Haaretz

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Sun., January 06, 2008 Tevet 28, 5768

Israel Time: 01:45 (EST+7)

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'Absentee' land slated for E. Jerusalem homes

By Meron Rapoport

The Housing Ministry is pushing forward with the construction of more than 1,000 residential units in East Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood on land held by "absentee" Palestinians from the Bethlehem area. The move is in violation of both an instruction from the attorney general to stop applying the absentee law in East Jerusalem and explicit promises to the U.S. not to apply that law in the capital's eastern quarters.

About four weeks ago, the Housing Ministry published a tender to build 300 units to complete Stage B of the Har Homa plan. The tender evoked international outrage and U.S. and Palestinian pressure to block the construction. It is now evident that most of the land for the 300 units belongs to residents of Beit Sahur who were declared absentee, so their lands were taken by the state without compensation or legal hearings.

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According to ownership maps of the area, of the 24-dunam (6 acres) area slated for the construction, 18 dunam belonged to Beit Sahur residents and six dunam were appropriated from Jewish owners. A total of 188 of the apartments are slated for construction on the absentee land.

The application of the absentee law to East Jerusalem has been very controversial ever since the annexation of the eastern part of the city after the Six-Day War. Then attorney general Meir Shemgar stated one year after the war that there was no "justification for the annexation of East Jerusalem to amount to taking a person's property" and recommended not applying the law. Over the years there have been changes in this position, and in late 2004 the Ministerial Committee on Jerusalem Affairs decided, in an unreported meeting, to resume application of the absentee law.

After that decision was published in Haaretz, the U.S. government demanded it be changed. As a result, in February 2005 Attorney General Menachem Mazuz published instructions adopting the 1968 Shemgar opinion and ordered the "immediate cessation of the application of the absentee law on East Jerusalem assets."

Apparently that instruction has not been implemented. In addition to the 300 units mentioned above, the state apparently plans to build another 1,000 apartments on absentee lands in Stage 3 of Har Homa. The construction of the new neighborhood was approved by the Jerusalem municipal planning board. The Housing Ministry is moving forward, even after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert directed that he be apprised of any construction plans in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The new neighborhood is planned for east of the already-constructed Har Homa, in close proximity to Beit Sahur and Bethlehem. If built, it would isolate Bethlehem completely from the Palestinian neighborhoods south of Jerusalem.

In a hearing by the Jerusalem planning board last January city council member Pepe Alalu opposed the plan, saying the area could expand Beit Sahur, which suffers from overcrowding. In response, the Jerusalem district planner for the Housing Ministry, Ayalon Bernard, said "residents of Sur Baher don't own the Stage 3 and Stage 4 Har Homa lands, which belong to Bethlehemites. The landowners are absentees."

The land is farmland owned by about 600 Beit Sahur families who worked the plots until the construction of the separation fence in the area. The Justice Ministry preferred to ignore the contradiction between Mazuz's 2005 instructions and what appears to be sweeping application of the absentee law to build new neighborhoods at Har Homa.

The Justice Ministry said in a response that the land for the Har Homa construction was expropriated for public purposes from Jewish owners also, and that the absentee issue is irrelevant.

In its response, the Housing Ministry stated, "there is no decision to stop the construction" of Har Homa Stage 3 and technical amendments to the plans will be submitted to the district planning committee.

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