Dayan urges PM not to evacuate Beit Ezra
12/10/2012 04:36
Settler leader asks not to evacuate two families; Diaspora Minister Edelstein doesn't believe Israel will evacuate the settlers.
Settlement leader Dani Dayan Photo: Tovah Lazaroff
Settler leader Dani Dayan on Saturday night urged Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu not to evacuate two Jewish families from Beit Ezra in the West Bank
city of Hebron.
“It’s a test case for the government’s policy,” said
Dayan, who heads the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the
Gaza Strip.
He wrote his letter in advance of the state response to the
High Court of Justice on the matter, which is due on Monday, December
17.
The court has rejected a state request to delay the case until after
the election on January 22.
A military appeals court has said it is
preferable for the Jewish families to remain in four former Palestinian market
stalls than for the structures to stand empty. It said that the families should
stay there until such time as the Palestinians could return to the
stalls.
A Hebron Jewish family initially owned the building, which abuts
the Avraham Avinu apartment complex, but was forced to leave it in
1947.
The structure then passed into the hands of the state custodian of
abandoned properties, first under Jordan and then under Israel.
Until
2001, two Palestinians rented the four stalls from the custodian. At that time,
the IDF forced the Palestinians to abandon the shops for security
reasons.
In 2010 Peace Now petitioned the High Court of Justice on behalf
of the Palestinian shopkeepers.
Dayan told The Jerusalem Post he fears
that the government’s stance will be that the two Jewish families must now leave
the four stalls. One family uses it as an apartment, and the other has
incorporated the spaces into their larger Avraham Avinu
apartment.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein said he did not
believe that the state would seek to evacuate Beit Ezra.