The “Migron Bill” is unjust and would go against the constitutional right to
property as defined in Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, Minister-without-
Portfolio Bennie Begin said on Wednesday.
Begin said the Migron Bill is
“not just and not logical,” speaking in an emergency meeting called during the
Knesset’s spring recess by MKs Danny Danon (Likud) and Zevulun Orlev (Habayit
Hayehudi) in order to convince the government to approve the legislation. The
bill states that outpost homes built on land classified by the state as private
Palestinian property may not be demolished if they have been in place for more
than four years and if at least 20 families live in the community. It also
proposes compensating the Palestinian landowners instead of evacuating
homes.
“The law cannot allow private Arab lands to be used to build
Jewish settlements,” Begin said.
“If the bill passes, the court will
cancel the law, because it opposes the right to property, which is protected by
a basic law.”
According to Begin, “settling our homeland is based on our
natural, historical right to the land, but also relies on the power of the
state. We have the power; therefore we must be fair and careful.”
The
Ministerial Committee for Legislation rejected the bill in December because it
believed that it would harm negotiations between the Migron residents and
Begin.
The residents were working on an agreement through which the
outpost would be voluntarily relocated to state land two kilometers away near
the Psagot winery.
Last month, however, the High Court of Justice
rejected the agreement’s timeline and insisted that the outpost of 50 families
in the Binyamin region must be evacuated by August 1, instead of by November 30,
2015, as the state requested.
In reaction to the court’s decision, there
has been a renewed push to legislate on the issue, by way of preventing Migron’s
August 1 evacuation.
According to Danon, the High Court is populated by
the “extreme Left,” and the makeup of the current Knesset shows that the general
public is against those opinions.
“The extreme left can’t fill this hall,
and can’t convince the public that their opinions are correct,” Danon said.
“They don’t even try to get votes. Instead, they go to the courts and
complain.”
The Likud MK said that matters of ideology, such as
settlements, should be decided in the Knesset, by elected
representatives.
Orlev accused the courts of lacking respect for
government decisions or the majority of the Knesset, saying that they are being
used to promote Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s political agenda.
“The
heart of the matter is that the government has yet to fulfill its commitment and
come up with a worthy arrangement for the residents of Migron,” he
said.
Begin said he is working hard to make an arrangement to which
Migron residents would agree, and pointed out that the High Court rejected the
timeline in the agreement, but not its core: To rebuild the homes on state-owned
land nearby.
“We cannot do what some public figures have suggested and
only accept court decisions that we like,” Begin explained.
“We reached
agreements on Migron with great difficulty, though some MKs encourage the
residents not to do so.”
“If we hadn’t reached an agreement,” he said,
“the settlement would not exist as of a month ago.”
Begin then quoted his
father, former prime minister Menachem Begin, who said after the High Court
declared in 1979 that Eilon Moreh must be moved, “It would be unnecessary to
relay messages such as ‘we have to respect the court’s decision,’ as that would
be obvious.”
The minister pointed out that tens of thousands of settlers
built homes since then, and that there are over 360,000 Jewish Israelis living
in Judea and Samaria.
“Not every situation has a solution that is totally
satisfactory,” Begin said.