Israel court rules settler ownership of West Bank building

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(AFP) – 14 hours ago

Jerusalem — An Israeli court on Tuesday ruled that Jewish settlers were the lawful owners of a long-disputed building in the heart of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

The Supreme Court ruling brings an end to a legal dispute lasting nearly seven years, after the Palestinian Rajabi family said its four-storey building had been taken over by Israeli settlers.

Israeli settlements on occupied land the Palestinians want for their future state have been a major source of tensions in US-brokered peace talks relaunched last year.

The building is near a contested holy site known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque and to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs in a tightly-controlled Israeli enclave where many streets are off-limits to Palestinian cars.

The settlers were evacuated in 2008, and the court verdict said they would not be allowed to move back in until they get defence ministry approval.

The structure was sold in 2004 by its Palestinian owners to settlers through a "non-Jewish straw man", according to court documents.

When settlers moved into the structure in 2007 the Palestinians charged they had been tricked and said the purchase was invalid, lodging complaints with the police and petitioning the court.

Palestinians view the selling of property in occupied territory to Jewish settlers as a betrayal of their national cause, so such purchases are nearly always conducted in secret or through middlemen, increasing the potential for disputes.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gW597JL1u4nvNJ90qpZEL1hpkDiA?docId=23fa74bf-3cd4-4b93-9de5-706eb77fc950

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1. more about the so called "Peace House"

The HCJ’s decision exhausts all legal appeals by the building’s Palestinians owners who had argued the deal, worth over $1 million, was fraudulent The lack of Ya’alon’s approval is now the only remaining obstacle that prevents Jewish families from moving into Beit HaShalom, located just outside the Kiryat Arabia settlement on one of the main roads in Hebron that leads to the Cave of the Patriarchs.

Hebron Jews have in the past argued that their presence there would help safeguard the road to the cave from Palestinian attacks.

While Beit HaShalom is situated in an area of Hebron under Israeli control, if inhabited, it would also be the only Jewish building in a Palestinian neighborhood. The stone structure is also located next to a Mosque and a Muslim cemetery. A Jewish presence in that section of Hebron would expand the slim holdings of the city’s Jewish population of 850, which lives in three separate compounds on the other side of the Cave; Avraham Avinu, Beit Hadassah and Tel Rumaida. [...]

On Tuesday, Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi) called on Ya’alon to pick up where Barak left off. “Today it was conclusively proven that Beit HaShalom belongs to Jews and that its violent evacuation by [former prime minister] Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak was totally unnecessary. “I call on my friend Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to allow the Jews to return home,” Ariel said.

It'll surely come with hazards, but in the end it'll be worth it, and Ya'alon should fully approve the living quarters.

http://telchaination.blogspot.com/2014/03/peace-house-in-hebron-finally-gets.html