Jews Arrested for Entering Jewish Home
www.IsraelNationalNews.com
27 Tammuz 5768, 30 July 08 04:42by Ze'ev Ben-Yechiel
(IsraelNN.com)
A group of 160 Jewish activists entered a Jerusalem property belonging to a
Jew on Wednesday, to reclaim ownership of the property from Arabs who began
to build an illegal structure there. Despite attempts by Border Guard
officers to evacuate the Jews, the activists succeeded in staying long
enough for them to declare the property returned to Jewish hands before some
150 were arrested and taken for questioning by Jerusalem District police.
The property consists of a number of caravans on approximately 5 acres (20
dunams) of land in the Ras Hamis neighborhood of northern Jerusalem, between
French Hill and Anata. The caravans on the property do not have electricity
or running water.
According to activist Aryeh King, the group obtained permission to enter and
take control of the property from owner Eliyahu Cohanim, a resident of Ramat
Gan. The land is part of the Eastern Gate compound that the Jerusalem
Municipality has planned as a Jewish residential area and industrial park.
"We did this after the Arabs started this week to build an illegal structure
on the spot, this is after the municipality has already demolished a
structure on this property once before," King said.
Although the property belongs to a Jew who gave them permission to come, and
King's group notified police in advance of their arrival, a group of Border
Guard police officers arrived Wednesday morning and told the activists to
leave the property. The activists refused to comply with the order and
remained.
Several days ago Border Guard officers succeeded in preventing the group
from entering the property.
The Palestinian Authority has also submitted a program for construction in
the area, including the plot of land belonging to Cohanim. There has been
widespread illegal Arab construction throughout Judea and Samaria in recent
years.
According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), a senior PA
official boasted that Arabs have built 6,000 homes without permits during
the last four years in Jerusalem alone, of which fewer than 200 were
demolished by the city.
Many of the illegal Arab homes are being built on Jewish-owned land,
according to Haaretz.
The JCPA reports that "in the Jewish neighborhoods, illegal construction
typically takes the form of additions to existing legal structures - such as
closing a balcony or hollowing out under a building to create an extra room.
In the Arab sector, however, illegal construction often takes the form of
entire multi-floor buildings with four to 25 living units, built with the
financial assistance of the Palestinian Authority on land that is not owned
by the builder."
At the same time, the Israeli government has destroyed a much higher
percentage of Jewish homes that do not meet the paperwork requirements.
Olmert: 'No need to demolish illegal Arab homes, eastern Jerusalem will be
given to PA'
In 2006, King reported that Ehud Olmert, as the mayor of Jerusalem, ordered
the municipality to destroy files that documented hundreds of illegal Arab
building projects throughout eastern Jerusalem.
In the report, published by World Net Daily, King asked the State
Comptroller at the time to investigate the situation, following the
publication of a local media report alleging that Ofir May, as head of the
Jerusalem Department of building permits, erased the files. The files
detailed over 300 cases of Arab construction on eastern Jerusalem deemed
illegal starting from 1999.
The local report alleged that the files were destroyed with the specific
intent of allowing the statute of limitations on home demolitions to run
out, making it impossible to destroy the illegal Arab homes.
"Ehud Olmert gave the order not to deal with the problem and not to put
Israeli security forces to the duty of taking down the illegal Arab
complexes. Senior municipal workers told me Olmert said not to bother with
the illegal Arab homes because eventually eastern Jerusalem would be given
to the Palestinian Authority," said King.
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