Haaretz
Shvat 10, 5765
The Sharon government
implemented the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem last July,
contrary to Israeli government policy since Israeli law was extended to
East Jerusalem after the Six Day War. The law means that thousands of
Palestinians who live in the West Bank will lose ownership of their
property in East Jerusalem.
Government officials estimate the
assets total thousands of dunam, while other estimates say they could add
up to half of all East Jerusalem property.
The government decision
in July confirms a decision reached in the ministerial committee for
Jerusalem affairs a month earlier. The decision was presented to the prime
minister and attorney general and met with their approval, but the
decision was not publicized until now and is not listed on the Web site of
the Prime Minister's Office.
The Absentee Property Law of 1950
stipulates, among other things, that an absentee is someone who at the
time of the War of Independence "was in any part of the land of Israel
that is outside the area of Israel" - that is, the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
According to the law, absentee assets are transfered to the
authority of the Custodian for Absentee Property, without the absentee
being eligible for any compensation. When East Jerusalem came under
Israeli law, then-attorney general Meir Shamgar directed that the law not
be applied to West Bank residents who have property in the parts of East
Jerusalem that became part of the State of Israel. Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin reissued that directive in 1993.
With the recent construction
of the fence in the Jerusalem region, Palestinian landholders from
Bethlehem and Beit Jala requested permission to continue working their
fields, which are within Jerusalem's municipal jurisdiction. The state's
response stated that the lands "no longer belong to them, but have been
handed over to the Custodian for Absentee Property." At stake are
thousands of dunam of agricultural land on which the Palestinians grew
olives and grapes throughout the years.
"These people's property
was always considered absentee assets, but so long as no fence existed,
these people could get to their property and everything was fine from
their standpoint," said a senior judicial official involved in the case.
"The fence is the result of terrorism. It's not fair that a man becomes an
absentee because his tie to his land has been cut without his doing. But
morality is one thing, and what is written in our laws
another."
The Palestinian landholders and their Israeli lawyers
term it a "land grab," and also worry that nascent Housing Ministry plans
will build on part of absentees' land.