Faida Abulhajj, Southside Pride, March 2010
I recently read a letter on your website entitled “Who are the families Ryan Olander was trying to help?”, a response to the article “Freedom for Ryan Olander, justice for Sheikh Jarrah”. This letter was penned by Renie Schreiber, press officer, Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest. I was dismayed (though not surprised) that the author would have us believe that, despite the overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary, it is in fact the Israelis that are the victims of occupation and land confiscation at the hands of Palestinians and that this injustice has been occurring for more than 100 years. She concludes with the assertion that the Israeli legal system has been managing this most unfortunate event with a blind eye towards race in a manner circumscribed by the laws of the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel, as we all know, is only interested in following the law.
The land is in East Jerusalem, the only Palestinian area left in Jerusalem which is small and shrinking ever day due to illegal annexation by Israel. It is claimed that this land was purchased by Sephardic Jews in 1876 and confiscated by Arabs after the war of 1948. The Sephardic community now would like their land returned to them and has asked the Israeli courts to intervene. Unsurprisingly, the court ruled in favor of the Sephardic community and has required the Palestinian families to either pay rent or be evicted. Schreiber emphasized that this is solely a civil case, and does not involve the Israeli government. The land, she asserts, is clearly owned by the Sephardic community, and this ownership is undisputed as there have been 3 court rulings on this case.
She does, however, omit a few key points on this case that would cast a pall over her arguments. The plaintiff’s case is predicated around the claim that they are the true owners of the land as demonstrated by documents submitted to the court decades ago. These documents are copies of documents in the possession of the Turkish government (previously the Ottoman Empire was occupying the area in the late 1800’s and hence would have applied their laws). It turns out, however, that that these documents are forgeries [1]. The Turkish government has no record of the documents presented to the courts by the Sephardic community – the ‘proof’ that the land is indeed theirs – and have attested to this fact [2]. It is interesting to note that these documents have been in question for years. Despite this, the Israeli courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of the Israelis.
These facts raise a number of questions:
Do Israeli laws discriminate against the minority population? Palestinians are evicted from their land every day. The Israeli government uses numerous tactics to justify these evictions. It is clearly a systematic approach to annexing the land, and having a court system that will endorse, or even facilitate, confiscation of land by fraud delegitimizes the Israeli courts, the Israeli government, and claims of Israel as a fair and democratic society. As stated by the US Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs “Israeli courts have ruled in favor of such claims while failing to recognize the rights of Palestinian refugees to reclaim lost land and property.” [3]
Does the Israeli court even matter? It appears that the Israeli government is only restrained by its laws when it wants to be. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the dozens of “illegal settlements” (note that in fact they are all illegal by international law – more on that in a bit) need to be removed. Yet the Israeli government has simply ignored this order for years for the vast majority of these settlements. The Israeli Supreme Court has also ruled in 2007 that the Israeli government needs to change the route of the separation wall that illegally bisected the Palestinian village of Bil’in. Today this wall remains in place. It is unclear whether the Israeli government has any plans to comply with the Supreme Court. These are just two examples of how the Israeli government appears to select how and when the law actually matters. In the case of Sheikh Jarrah, Renie Schreiber seems deeply worried about the law and the ruling of the Supreme Court. Yet the Israeli government seems to routinely ignore these laws when it chooses.
Does Israel really care about laws? Despite the authors declarations of the value of the “rule of law” it appears that Israel is less than compelled to follow them when it does not support their cause. At the micro level, it appears that the Israeli courts have no problem making rulings that violate international law with respect to Sheikh Jarrah [3]. Zooming out, we see that, despite assertions of the importance of law to Israel, it has been in violation of international law for over 40 years [4], has been the subject of more UN Security Council resolutions than any other nation since 1967 [5,6], and, under its current government, appears to be making little or no efforts to comply with international law.
While the situation in Sheikh Jarrah is terrible, it is by no means an isolated event. Israel has been systematically squeezing out the Palestinians using its own laws when it can, and force when it cannot. The international community (unfortunately absent the United States in the last 20 years) has repeatedly maintained the illegality of the settlements. Just this week the European Union Court of Justice, Europe’s highest court, ruled that goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not considered ‘Israeli goods’ since they are produced in land that is occupied in violation of international law, fall outside of a free trade agreement between the EU and Israel, and hence are subject to import tariffs [7, 8].
If Israel is truly a nation of laws, as all democracies must be, then it will need to demonstrate this by its own compliance with the law – both national and international. The Israeli court system must objectively assess claims of land ownership that are based on demonstrable facts, not documents that are forged. It must apply its laws equally for all persons, regardless of their ethnicity. It must comply with the international laws that govern the annexation of land and end its occupation of the West Bank.
[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072208.html
[2] http://un-truth.com/israel/israeli-police-defy-judge-vow-to-break-up-israeli-anti-occupation-demonstration-in-sheikh-jarrah/comment-page-1
[3] http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/62542A1C86A18E5A852576150064C414
[4] http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/IMG/NR024094.pdf?OpenElement
[5] http://www.mediamonitors.net/michaelsladah&suleimaniajlouni1.html
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel
[7] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8538251.stm
[8] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3854620,00.html