Almost Nothing You’ve Heard About Evictions in Jerusalem Is True
By Bell & Kontorovich, 5/14/21, Wall St. Journal

Hamas never needs a special occasion to bombard Israel with
rockets. Yet the progressive narrative connects the terrorist
group’s current onslaught to eviction proceedings in Israeli
courts concerning a few properties in the Jerusalem neighbor-
hood of Sheikh Jarrah. Sens. Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren
claim these are stark human-rights violations by the Israeli
govt, & illegal under int'l law. Even the State Dept expressed
“serious concern.”

The truth about Sheikh Jarrah is the opposite. It is an
ordinary property dispute between private parties. The
Jewish claimants’ ownership of the few plots of land has been
confirmed repeatedly in court, following laws that apply
equally regardless of ethnicity. Israeli courts have gone out
of their way to avoid evicting the Palestinian residents who
haven’t paid rent for half a century.

In the case now before Israel’s Supreme Court, the owner is
an Israeli corporation with Jewish owners whose chain of
title is documented back to an original purchase in 1875.
Until 1948, the neighborhood now known as Sheikh Jarrah was
home to both Jewish & Arab communities. Jordan invaded Israel
in 1948 & occupied half of Jerusalem, expelling every one of
its Jewish inhabitants & seizing their property.

When Israel reunited Jerusalem & ended the Jordanian
occupation in 1967, it had to decide what to do with these
properties. In the many cases in which Jordan had officially
transferred the title of Jewish-owned props to Palestinians,
Israel respected the new titles—& still does—even though they
are based on forcible takings in a war of aggression followed
by ethnic cleansing against Jews. Where title had never
been transferred, however, Israel returned properties to
their owners. Critics of Israel claim that Arabs can’t recover
property under the same law, but the law is entirely neutral—
it is simply the case that Jordan took property from Jews,
not Palestinians.

Title to the properties in dispute in Sheikh Jarrah was never
given by Jordan to Palestinians, so Israeli law respects the
unbroken title of the plaintiffs. This case has nothing to do
with ethnicity or religion. The only discrimination in the
legal treatment of Sheikh Jarrah property is historic, by
Jordan, & against Jews to the benefit of Palestinians.

The plaintiff & its predecessors in title have spent 4 decades
in court seeking to recover possession of the properties. In
every case, courts have ruled in favor of the owners. In the
latest lawsuits, the courts ruled that 4 of the 8 defendants
were squatters with no legal rights in the land, & the
remaining 4 were descendants of tenants who had never paid rent.

Nevertheless, Israeli courts have treated the Palestinian
squatters & leaseholders alike as “protected tenants,” &
would shield them from eviction indefinitely if they paid
rent. They have refused to do so.

The laws involved are the same as any landlord would invoke.
There is only one objection in this case: the owners are Jews.
Western progressives have elevated the desire of some Arabs
not to have Jewish neighbors into a human right & a legal
entitlement that even the Jewish state must protect.

The human-rights groups pushing this issue focus on the
owners’ Jewishness. A letter from 190 progressive groups
mentions the Jewish identity of the plaintiffs 8 times,
calls them “settlers” 7 times—another way of saying they’re
Jews living where Jews aren’t allowed—& points out that
upholding the plaintiff’s property rights could change
Jerusalem’s “demographic character.” J Street, a left-wing
Jewish org, characterizes the lawsuits as an attempt to
“Judaize primarily Palestinian neighborhoods,” as if the
ethnicity of neighbors is a reason to take away Jews’ property.

Israeli courts adjudicate property disputes in Jerusalem
between Arab parties, or by Arabs against Jews, with no
protest. The manufactured controversy this time is an attempt
to pressure Israel effectively to perpetuate Jordan’s ethnic
cleansing—in the name of human rights.

There is much to say about Jewish property rights in the
region. The one million Jews who fled pogroms in Egypt, Iraq
& elsewhere in the Arab world after 1948 were forced to leave
behind $$billions of property, for which they have no remedy.
Even today, in the areas of the West Bank under the juris-
diction of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinians who sell
land to Jews are subject to torture, imprisonment & death.

Israel’s only crime in Sheikh Jarrah is refusing to follow
these examples of discrimination & respecting property rights.
Many critics, including the UN’s human-rights functionaries,
have tried to say this amounts to establishing settlements &
violating int'l law, a reference to the 4th Geneva Convention.
But even in the mistaken view that the convention applies here,
it prohibits only “the deportation or transfer” of citizens
by a govt into an occupied territory. It has no bearing on
private property rights & certainly doesn’t require a govt to
refuse to enforce them.

The real story behind Sheikh Jarrah is a microcosm of the
conflict: Israel is condemned for policies that are entirely
unremarkable, while discrimination against Jews is proclaimed
to be a rule of int'l law.

Bell is a prof at the U of San Diego Law School. Kontorovich
is director of the Center for the Middle East & Int'l Law at
George Mason U. School of Law. Both are scholars at the
Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/almost-nothing-youve-heard-about-evictions-in-jerusalem-is-true-11621019410

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