Michael Davison
Retired Industrial Engineer and Production Manager in IsraelWed

What legal argument does Israel use to evict Palestine from their homes?
Don't answer with emotions. I am looking for a response in respect of
the both local and international law.
The homes in question in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood (aka Shimon
Ha-Tzaddik) were built and owned by Jewish owners, some of them since
around 1850. The owners were expelled in 1948 by the Jordanian Army and
the Jordanian government allowed Arab families to move in and occupy
them. However, because Jordan’s 1950 attempt at annexation was rejected
by the UN, Jordan had no power to execute a transfer of ownership to
those families, making them illegal squatters under most relevant
ownership laws (which are NOT international laws).

Fast forward to August 1967 or thereabouts.

The families and heirs of the owners of record appealed to Israeli
courts to recognize their ownership of those homes, supported by title
deeds and land registry entries from Ottoman and British Mandate times.

While the courts did confirm the ownerships, a compromise was made that
the Arab families could remain as legal tenants, without ownership
rights, as long as they paid a court-ordered rent to the owners, equal
to about 1/4 of the going rental fate for similar homes in Jerusalem.

Fast forward again, now to 1995.

After the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority ordered those
families, along with other Arab families in the same situation (in the
Silwan neighborhood, aka Kfar Shiloah) to stop paying the court-ordered
rents. Appeals by the owners to the courts went from one level to the
next among Israeli courts, with the Arab residents, now again illegal squatters, appealing each court decision that went against them.

While the process took more than 20 years, finally eviction orders were
issued by the High Court of Justice, after all routes of appeal were
exhausted.

Hamas decided to politicize the court decision, knowing full well that
this decision had nothing to do with nationalism, being a simple landlord-tenant dispute.

The Palestinian Authority, in ordering those families to stop paying
rent 25 years ago are the actual cause of this dispute.

It’s possible that the present residents don’t even know that the homes never belonged to their families. The original generation who faced the
Israeli courts 54 years ago are probably all deceased and never told the succeeding generations that the homes weren’t theirs. However, during
the 20+ years of lawsuits, that little tidbit of information was brought
up hundreds of times, so there can be no excuse of ignorance.

Can the OP name a country that will not evict a tenant who refuses to
pay the rent he undertook to pay? How long would YOUR government take to
issue an eviction order? Six months? One year? Certainly not 25 years.

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