50 Palestinians evicted from Jerusalem homes

[Neil]

Martinus has been crushed, and revealed as an antisemite (yet again!).

Because of this, fags should have their rights stripped from them.

[Ed Anger]

I still trust you.

I do investment advice as well. Give me your bank account info. 

I've been burned once on that score. So no. 

[Neil]

I still trust you.

I do investment advice as well. Give me your bank account info. 

I've been burned once on that score. So no. 

Even if the email comes from a Nigerian IP, it's still not actually the President, or a general, or a business leader, looking to divy up his ill-gotten goods with you.

[Ed Anger]

I still trust you.

I do investment advice as well. Give me your bank account info. 

I've been burned once on that score. So no. 

Even if the email comes from a Nigerian IP, it's still not actually the President, or a general, or a business leader, looking to divy up his ill-gotten goods with you.

HE SAID HE WAS A GREEN BERET AND HE HAD OSAMA'S GOLD.

[Savonarola]

Hil weighs in:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/08/200983205357561590.html

US criticises Israeli eviction move 

Clinton called on Israel to respect its obligations as the US continues its mediation efforts

The US secretary of state has criticised the eviction of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem by Israeli officials, after holding talks with Jordan's foreign minister in Washington.

Hillary Clinton said after the meeting with Nasser Judeh that the forced removal over the weekend of Palestinian families from homes deemed by Israel's supreme court to be under Jewish ownership was "deeply regrettable".

"The eviction of families and demolition of homes in East Jerusalem is not in keeping with Israeli obligations and I urge the government of Israel and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions," she said on Monday.

George Mitchell, the US envoy for Middle East peace, is continuing to work with the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority in an effort to reach a peace agreement, Clinton said.

"I think everyone understands that sequential actions need to be taken and we are working very hard under Senator Mitchell's leadership and guidance to get to the negotiating table and, once there, everything concerning a comprehensive peace agreement is on that table," she said.

No 'piecemeal' approach

But Judeh said that Jordan does not support an incremental approach to building trust between Israel and Arab states, echoing similar comments on Friday by Saudi Arabia's foreign minister.

"In the Middle East, there has been in the past an overinvestment, perhaps, by the parties in pursuing confidence-building measures, conflict-management techniques, including transitional arrangements, and an overemphasis on gestures, perhaps at the expense of reaching the actual end game,'' Judeh said.

"Piecemeal approaches that never lead to peace and that have proven repeatedly to be confidence-eroding, rather than confidence-building'' must be avoided, he said.

He also spoke out against Israel's refusal to stop the construction of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, and said that the Israeli government should not reject the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

The Saudi authored plan offers Israel a full normalisation of ties with Arab states as long as Israel returns all Arab lands captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The initiative also calls for Israel to allow the creation of a viable Palestinian state to resolve the problem of Palestinian refugees, in line with United Nations resolutions.

[Martinus]

The fact that after the families were evicted, their homes were demolished in order to build a new block of flats there, suggests that the claims of these families being troublesome tenants were trumped up, too.

[The Minsky Moment]

Sure, if the legal action was brought while the adverse possession period has not yet completed, then yes, you are correct

The timeline as I understand it goes as follows:
In 1948, the property in question was acquired by the Jordanian government as confiscated enemy property.  In 1956, under a joint Jordanian-UN program, the property was rented out to Palestinian refugees.  It appears that the eventual intent was that the renters would eventually be given ownership, but it is undisputed this never happened.  This situation continued until 1967.  So far - there is no adverse possession issue - the residents are mere tenants, the government owner is collecting rent even if nominal in amount, and the Jewish owners are enemy aliens who are unable to enforce their pre-existing property rights.

In 1967, Israel takes over sovereignty over Jerusalem.  The land formerly held as "enemy property" by the Jordanian government now became Israeli government owned land under the aegis of Israel Land Administration.  It is unclear whether the Palestinians in question  here continued to pay their rent after 1967.  But in 1972, the plaintiffs in this case filed a claim with the Israel Land Administration asserting their title and sent rent demands to all the Palestinian tenants.  they made various efforts to collect including a formal rent delinquency action brought in 1982.  The lawyer representing the defendants settled the case by a binding agreement in which the defendants conceded the right of ownership, but secured "protected tenancy" status -- i.e the right to stay indefinitely at a favorable rent rate.  Apparently the defendants repudiated this agreement, and claimed their lawyer wasn't authorized to sign the agreement on their behalf.  That touched of years of litigation and legal maneuvering that finally ended in this ruling.

The only possible basis for an adverse possession claim I can see would have to be based on the 5 year period from 1967-1972 where the tenants were not paying rent and there is no evidence of the Land Administration's efforts to enforce title.  But 5 years is not nearly sufficient in most jurisdictions to establish an AP claim.  And even if it were sufficient, a court could easily find that any such claim was waived by the 1982 settlement agreement which waived ownership rights (assuming the court finds that the defendants lawyer had the requisite authority).

For the record, while I consider you and Joan to be reasonable in most cases, your only blind spot seems to be anything associated with Israel - I don't recall a single case in which you wouldn't rush to the defense of Israel's actions, no matter how controversial they have been.

I am not defending any action of "Israel" - only questioning the sensibility of international protests over a court ruling in a private dispute in the absence of any evidence that the ruling was improper in some way or based on some abhorrent legal principle.

From what I have read, it does appear that the plaintiffs in this case have a particular agenda - they are allied with or part of the settler movement, and this case is part of a broader strategy to expel Palestinians from certain Jerusalem neighborhoods.  I don't have any sympathy either for these movements, their agenda, or their use of the legal system to achieve those ends.  However, the protests are not directed as this particular movement, they are directed at the State of Israel as a whole based on the court ruling.  As you know, where the legal relations of parties are plain, the court is rarely permitted to speculate about motivations.  Owners of property can do whatever the law permits them to do with their property - even if the Court subjectively dislikes what they are doing.

[Jos Theelen]

Do I understand your story correctly?
It seems to say that while East-Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan, the Palestinians had the legal right to live there?
And during the time East-Jerusalem was occupied by Israel, it was legal to remove them?

So the legal case is dependent of who occupies East-Jerusalem?

[Malthus]

Do I understand your story correctly?
It seems to say that while East-Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan, the Palestinians had the legal right to live there?
And during the time East-Jerusalem was occupied by Israel, it was legal to remove them?

So the legal case is dependent of who occupies East-Jerusalem?

No, they had the exact same legal right to live there under the Israelis as they had under the Jordanians - in both cases, they were renting the property.

The dispute arose because they were alleged to have broken their tenancy agreement.

One presumes that had they broken their tenancy agreement while Jordan owned the place, they would have been out on their ear just as much as they are now - though possibly it would not have taken some 20-odd years of legal wrangling to accomplish that removal under Jordanian law (of which I know nothing).

[The Minsky Moment]

Do I understand your story correctly?
It seems to say that while East-Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan, the Palestinians had the legal right to live there?
And during the time East-Jerusalem was occupied by Israel, it was legal to remove them?

So the legal case is dependent of who occupies East-Jerusalem?

No.
The Palestinians have always had the legal right to live in East Jerusalem.  Always.  They had the right to live in East Jerusalem under the Ottomans, they had it under the British mandate; they had it under the Jordanians, and they had it and still have it today under the Israelis.

The property in question is alleged to have been owned since the Ottoman period by a Jewish family.  It was effectively confiscated as enemy property by the Jordanian government.  The Jordanians had a problem with Palestinian refugees hanging out in Jordan and making trouble.  So they decided to put some of these refugees in this particular property which it controlled.  These refugees had no previous connection with the property whatsoever, much less any ownership rights.

In 67, Israel took over sovereign control over East Jerusalem.  This included control over those areas of the city that were owned by the Jordanian government, including this particular piece of property.  Israeli law provided that property owned by the Israeli state could be reclaimed by prior owners divested of ownership by the Jordanian enemy property laws [note - this is not an unusual procedure and should not be entirely unfamiliar to a lawyer living int he former eastern bloc].  This law was invoked by the plaintiffs in this legal case to claim ownership.  They succeeded and made rent demands of the Palestinian tenants.  The rest of the story is as I have indicated earlier.

As should be clear, this case has nothing to do with the right of Palestinians to own property in East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, or Planet Mars.  The court apparently found that the defendant Palestinians were leaseholders and hence had no ownership rights to assert in the first place.  This may have been in error but there appears to have been more than sufficient factual basis, including a prior judicial admission purportedly made by the Palestinians affected.

[Valmy]

Wow...if what Joan says is true...

well that is what I get for taking a story about Israel at face value.

[Neil]

Israeli law provided that property owned by the Israeli state could be reclaimed by prior owners divested of ownership by the Jordanian enemy property laws [note - this is not an unusual procedure and should not be entirely unfamiliar to a lawyer living int he former eastern bloc].

And the evidence against Martinus being a lawyer continues to mount.

[Jos Theelen]

The question was not about the right to live in East-Jerusalem. The question was about this part:

In 1956, under a joint Jordanian-UN program, the property was rented out to Palestinian refugees.  It appears that the eventual intent was that the renters would eventually be given ownership, but it is undisputed this never happened.  This situation continued until 1967.

It gives the idea that during the time Jordan controlled  East-Jerusalem, a court would have decided that those people could live there legally (although it was formally owned by Israeli) and could even own the houses. And because East-Jerusalem is now controlled by Israel, a court decides that those people could not live there legally. Is that correct? It makes justice somehow very dependent on the present power.

P.S. what would have happened if those people had got ownership during the Jordan ruling?

[Jos Theelen]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1105316.html

A part of the editorial of Haartez:

No thinking person will be persuaded that Jews have a sweeping right to return to their homes in East Jerusalem as long as Israeli law not only bars Palestinians from returning to their homes in West Jerusalem, but even evicts them from the houses where they have lived for the last 60 years. The Israel Lands Administration's regulations do not even allow Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to buy land and houses in many parts of the city.

[Valmy]

The Israel Lands Administration's regulations do not even allow Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to buy land and houses in many parts of the city.

True but the same regulations prevent Israelis from buying lands or building in the West Bank areas and Gaza (at least those areas Israel recognizes as no theirs...which is slightly different than what we would prefer they they recognized as not theirs).