High Court told settlers illegally built on private Palestinian land

According to petitioners, five permanent structures and five mobile homes have been built on land belonging to Mahbohba Yassin and Harbi Mustafa.

By DAN IZENBERG
hebron settlers 88 (photo credit: )
hebron settlers 88
(photo credit: )
Two Palestinians from the village of Dura al-Kara, north of Beit El, petitioned the High Court of Justice on Wednesday, charging that Jews had seized their land and built on it illegally. According to the petitioners, represented by attorney Michael Sfard of the Yesh Din human rights group, five permanent structures have been built and five mobile homes deployed on land belonging to Mahbohba Yassin and Harbi Mustafa. Yassin is the daughter and heir of the registered owner of one plot in the village, while Mustafa is a registered owner of another. Three other illegal buildings have been put up on land that does not belong to the petitioners, according to Sfard. He demanded that the army and police immediately implement stop-work orders and demolition orders against the five permanent structures and mobile homes. Sfard wrote that the Beit El Yeshiva campus was apparently selling apartments in the allegedly illegal buildings, which it was also reportedly involved in constructing. He added that he could not be sure of this, because the construction was illegal and the buildings were not registered anywhere. He also charged that "the buildings are near the civil administration headquarters, including their law enforcement agencies. And so, right under the noses of those charged with law enforcement, with their open knowledge and conscious inaction, land theft is taking place on a huge scale." Sfard referred to the allegedly illegal construction as part of the outpost of Jabel Artis. However, Beit El local council head Moshe Rosenbaum identified the outpost as Pisgat Ya'acov and told The Jerusalem Post he considered it to be a legal neighborhood of Beit El. He added that he did not know about the petition. Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.