This land is your land, this land is my land By Meron Rapoport
Jewish settlement organizations, criminal Palestinian elements, the Israel Border Police, the attorney general, the Interior Ministry - all have a role in the complex land-confiscation drama being played out in East Jerusalem these days. The so-called `state land' in question is actually property belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Aryeh King has a lexicon of his own. In our first phone conversation he sets up a meeting in his home, which is located at Ma'aleh Zeitim. Where is that? "On the Mount of Olives [Har Hazeitim]," he explains. Actually, King lives in Ras al-Amud, a Jewish neighborhood established by the American-Jewish tycoon Irwin Moskowitz, in the heart of the densely populated Arab area of East Jerusalem. King is considered Moskowitz's "man in Jerusalem," though King himself has reservations about the description. "You can say that I work with Moskowitz, as I do with many other people," he says.
Later, in the office in which the interview eventually takes place (which is described as "the office of Moledet [an ultranationalist Israeli political party] in the eastern city, on Nablus Street, opposite the U.S. Consulate; you will recognize it by the Moledet banners outside") language problems arise again. King refers repeatedly to "state lands," which are said to exist in abundance in Jerusalem. Only after a few questions does it become clear that he is talking about land owned by West Bank Palestinians, the "absentees" whose status in Jerusalem has been the subject of controversy in Israel since 1967. For King, however, the controversy has been resolved and the problem is solved: The land, which he estimates at tens of thousands of dunams (4 dunams = 1 acre), simply belong to the State of Israel. They are lands that the state, in what he calls a serious blunder, has not yet taken control of.
Many people did not like the decision last month by the attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, which effectively annulled a government decision of July 2004 to apply the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem. The existence of the government decision was first reported by Haaretz after the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha'ir revealed that the state had informed Palestinians who sought access to land they owned in Jerusalem, that they were considered "absentees" and therefore the land no longer belonged to them.
The leading objector was Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that the government had made the "right Zionist decision." Similarly, the minister for the Diaspora and Jerusalem, Natan Sharansky, who headed the ministerial committee that made the decision last July, said it was made under the law and had to be applied. The senior ranks of the Border Police were also unhappy about Mazuz's move, because "those who will profit now are the Arab land thieves, who steal from Arabs, and now they are pleased," according to a senior officer of the Border Police.
Aryeh King, from the Jewish associations in East Jerusalem ("Don't affiliate me with any association, I work with all of them - Elad, Ateret Kohanim, all of them") is also displeased with Mazuz's move. The difference is that King doesn't take it very seriously.
"It's all nonsense," he says, between a phone call with a group of investors looking for land to buy at Shuafat Ridge, a cell-phone conversation with the wife of a Palestinian who offered to sell him absentees' lands in East Jerusalem ("Not home? Okay, shukran [`thanks,' in Arabic]," goes the surrealistic conversation between King and the woman), and another call on a second line with Shimon, a member of the Likud Central Committee, who wanted to buy land in the area of Har Homa, the new Jewish neighborhood in the south of Jerusalem.
"After all, the custodian of absentee property will not abide by what Mazuz says," King explains. "He does what the minister says. With all respect, this is a ministerial decision. They can decide whatever they want. I know from the treasury and from Sharansky's ministry that from their point of view, nothing has changed and he [Mazuz] doesn't decide for them. I understood from them, from their people, that to apply the law [of absentee property] and to enforce the law in East Jerusalem is legal, and therefore there is no reason not to implement it."
Sharansky vs. Mazuz
With regard to Sharansky, at least, King undoubtedly knows what the minister thinks. In the middle of our conversation, King's mobile phone rings; it is in speaker mode: "Helena from Sharansky" wants to put through a call from Louisa who, it turns out in the course of the talk, is Sharansky's assistant. What follows is a transcript of the conversation:
Louisa: "Hi, Aryeh."
King: "Louisa, I haven't had updates from you for a long time."
Louisa: "The truth is that I'm sure you get updated through Davidaleh" - David Be'eri, head of the Elad Association, which specializes in settling Jews in the village of Silwan, which abuts the City of David just outside the Old City of Jerusalem (Elad is an acronym for "To the City of David").
King: "I want to be updated."
Louisa: "Why don't you come?"
King: "What, was there a meeting today?"
Louisa: "No, not today. But we met this week on Sunday, not at Natan's, alone, but the same team all the time."
King: "Yes, I know, it was on Sunday."
Louisa: "Right. As a matter of fact, Davidaleh wasn't there. I thought one of your people would show up anyway."
King: "I want to tell you - and this is putting it mildly - that I, we, are not so happy about this story."
Louisa: "Why? About what, exactly?"
King: "Because it's not going in the direction we thought it would ... not at all."
Louisa: "In what way?"
King: "In what way? That the way of thinking is not what we hoped they would think."
As a corollary to the decision to apply the Absentee Property Law to East Jerusalem, Sharansky's committee stipulated that the property in question could be transferred to the development authority - in other words, that it could be used for building and other purposes.
I had met with the minister earlier, in his office. Sharansky was angry at Mazuz's statement that two representatives of the attorney general who attended the meeting of the ministerial committee last July, had tried to protest the decision formulated by Sharansky and Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party), but that their objections had been overruled. Sharansky and Orlev, Mazuz's announcement said, also decided to reject the proposal made by the attorney general's representatives, to the effect that every decision to declare a property as falling under the "absentee" category would require the confirmation of the legal adviser to the Finance Ministry (namely Yamima Mazuz, who, as it happens, is the attorney general's sister).
"I was surprised, because the announcement contained things that can be checked against the minutes," Sharansky said. "It's legitimate to contest the decision, but not to say that it was made illegally." According to Sharansky, the officials from the attorney general's office did not express any substantive opposition to the wording of the decision. One of the officials, Yaakov Shapira, said only that there was no need for a decision; a statement of clarification would suffice. As for the annulment of the clause that would have required special authorization for every declaration of absentee property - that was not done at Shapira's request. And Shapira had in fact stayed until the end of the meeting and had helped frame the final decision. (The Justice Ministry stands by its account, according to which Shapira insisted on the need for consultation with legal officials before every declaration under the Absentee Property Law, but his position was rejected.)
Land thefts
Louisa Walitsky, Sharansky's assistant, related that she was present at the meeting of the ministerial committee. "She deals with those things," Sharansky's spokesperson says. Sharansky explained that the decision was a mere technicality, a clarification and no more. When asked to explain why the clarification was needed at all, he said that the representatives of the treasury and of the custodian of absentee property told the committee that a state of anarchy existed with regard to land in East Jerusalem, that land was being seized. "The custodian has to straighten things out," Sharansky was told.
His assistant sings the same tune. Treasury officials had explained that Arab land dealers were seizing land belonging to Arabs and dispossessing the true owners. So, she is asked, Netanyahu sent his people to the ministerial committee only in order to protect the Arab landowners in Jerusalem? She apparently finds this funny and laughs.
Land theft in East Jerusalem is undoubtedly a serious problem. The police have uncovered a number of gangs of Palestinians who, by means of fraud and forgery, took possession of land belonging to their compatriots. In some cases the land belonged to "absentees" - that is, residents of the West Bank - while in other cases it was the land of Palestinians who emigrated, or land belonging to city residents that had been taken over forcibly. In 2004 alone, according to the Jerusalem police, 11 complaints were submitted to the Fraud Squad dealing with the falsified registration of hundreds of dunams of land in East Jerusalem. Six cases were sent on to the State Prosecutor's Office for the preparation of indictments. Three additional complaints were submitted to the Minorities Squad, of which three had been referred to the state prosecution.
The Border Police, who are responsible for security in the area of the separation fence in Jerusalem, encountered the previously unknown problem when construction of the obstacle began. "We started work on the fence, using tractors," senior officers relate, "when suddenly people told us that they were the owners of the land. They brought us documents in Arabic and we didn't understand a thing. We were referred to an adviser to the custodian of absentee property, who informed us that most of the land was absentee property and advised us on how to check the matter."
The Border Police now have special personnel to deal with this problem. The forgeries, they say, relate especially to land of West Bank residents who are classified as absentees. On the one hand, the state did not seize this land, because of the decision in principle not to apply the Absentee Property Law in Jerusalem (the law that the ministerial committee overrode last summer). On the other hand, the landowners could not sell their property, because it was listed as absentee land in the Land Registry. As a result, the Border Police sources say, "the crooks were able to seize the land and make deals worth millions."
Order amid the chaos
Defense establishment sources say the problem came up in internal discussions from the moment talk began about building a fence in Jerusalem. This led to the idea that implementing the Absentee Property Law would "create order" amid the chaos. There were also cases in which declaring land to be absentee property abridged the procedures for building the fence. In the West Bank, where the military government is in charge, the army is able to seize land needed to build the fence by means of an order issued by the chief of the territorial command. In East Jerusalem, where Israeli law has been in force since the area was annexed in June 1967, the land-seizure procedure is more complicated and can be lengthy. A case in point is the Cliff Hotel on the boundary between Jerusalem and the town of Abu Dis.
The Border Police wanted the hotel for use as an observation position and applied to the Defense Ministry. "The Defense Ministry explained that obtaining a requisition order is a lengthy process," says Commander Amitai Levy, the chief of the "Jerusalem Envelope" division in the Border Police. "I told them that I needed the building as quickly as possible. Then the treasury told me that I didn't need a requisition order, because the hotel had absentee certification."
The hotel's lawyers maintain that the absentee certificate was issued only after the procedures for obtaining a requisition order began. The defense establishment says that first the hotel was declared absentee property and only then was it requisitioned. What is not in dispute is that the hotel is now in the possession of the Border Police and that the usually lengthy process of getting a requisition order was greatly abbreviated. Attorney Mohammed Dahla, who represented the hotel's owners at the time, says Commander Levy threatened that if the owners did not agree to house the Border Police on the top floor, the entire structure would be declared absentee property and confiscated. Levy denies this outright.
Many Palestinians claim that the Border Police has become a policy-making element with respect to East Jerusalem land. The Border Police decides what should be demolished and its personnel find out where Jewish-owned land exists and help keep watch over it. The Israel Police and the Border Police deny this categorically. "We are only carrying out orders and acting according to the law," the police say.
One of the most telling examples cited by the Palestinians is the village of Walajah, which is half within the municipal area of Jerusalem and half within the territory of the Palestinian Authority. Benny Cohen, a Jewish merchant who says he bought land in the area of the village and intends to build a huge neighborhood on it, was seen walking through the village in the company of Border Policemen, to the unabashed displeasure of the residents. Ahmed Bargout, a villager, says that Cohen was even present when he (Bargout) was interrogated by Commander Levy at Checkpoint 300, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Levy does not recall any such event. "If he [Cohen] was there, it must have been as a suspect or for questioning," Levy says.
Levy does confirm, however, that Benny Cohen gets the help of the Border Police and that this is of mutual benefit: "Cohen came to us and said that people were building on his land in Walajah," Levy relates. "We sent investigators to the site with him, together with Interior Ministry personnel. The Interior Ministry officials said the land was not his, that it belonged to Arabs, but that the construction work on it was illegal. We then stopped dealing with his case. Afterward, when we were given the task of investigating which of the villages is illegal, we also asked Benny Cohen what he knows about the village and we got information from him. I have met him twice, that's all."
From Levy's viewpoint, Cohen helped out in an important investigation, because, Levy says, three terrorists bound for Jerusalem went through Walajah. Understandably this cooperation is perceived differently by the village residents.
King's different take
Whereas the Border Police look at the situation through a security prism, Aryeh King has a completely different take on the question of absentee property. True, he too, like the Border Police, talks about massive land theft, but his concern is different. The absentee property, he says, simply belongs to the state and constitutes the land reserves of Jerusalem. If this land is passed up, Jews will not have anywhere to live in Jerusalem. He therefore has an eye on all the absentee land in the city, going through the records and reporting to the custodian, urging him to take action. This is why he, along with all the Jewish associations in East Jerusalem, thinks that the failure to implement the Absentee Property Law over the years was a mistake, the decision by the Sharansky committee was logical and Mazuz's move is idiotic.
Sharansky, we can assume, concurs, and not only because of what his assistant said about the meetings between him and the activists from the associations. It's also because Avi Maoz, who was for many years Sharansky's right-hand man, serving as his director general in the Industry and Trade Ministry and in the Housing Ministry, was also a senior figure in Elad.
Benny Cohen, too, likely comes from a similar background. The managing director of his company, Givat Yael, which plans to build thousands of residential units near Walajah, is no other than Meir Davidson, who was the senior person in Ateret Kohanim at the beginning of the 1990s. Under Davidson, that association was behind the Jewish takeover of Arab properties in the Old City of Jerusalem by dubious means, which were sharply criticized in the report of the Klugman Commission in 1992. In the wake of the report, the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, decided to suspend the implementation of the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem.
King, though, is continuing to scour East Jerusalem for sites suspected of being absentee property. He is nothing if not meticulous, searching the Land Registry and the municipality archives and maintaining close touch with the custodian of absentee property.
"How does one know that a particular person is an absentee, that this site belongs to an absentee?" King asks, explaining his method. "It's when he does a transaction." In that case the transaction must be recorded in the Land Registry and a building permit has to be obtained from the municipality - and then King goes into action. He peruses the lists, finds absentees, looks for all the land that is registered in their name, and with that information approaches the state authorities, telling them, "Take it, it's yours."
And what does the state do?
King: "Nothing. Not since that decision of nearly 12 years ago [by Rabin]."
To whom do you take the information?
"To the custodian of absentee property. Maybe I have an example here of a letter I sent to him. There is no fooling around. If someone requests a building permit, I check it out."
How do you know about the request?
"I see the request when it is published in the Government Gazette."
So you are constantly going through the Government Gazette?
"In places where I already know that there are many absentees - I know the blocs where that situation exists - I take the name and search."
What happens when you find the name of an absentee?
"They cancel the sale."
King is not satisfied with his successes in blocking the sale of land in East Jerusalem to Arabs. On the contrary: He feels frustrated. True, the custodian entered an absentee notation regarding the property in question, but since the decision of the Rabin government, the properties were not transferred to the development authority within the Israel Lands Administration. In short, the state cannot use the land to build new neighborhoods (for Jewish residents, of course). It belongs to the custodian only on paper.
"What happened because of that miserable decision is that even if we discovered absentee property and went to the custodian, and he entered a notation, it didn't trickle down to the field," King complains. "The Arabs exploited the situation - which they knew about - and went to town. They took over every lot that was registered as absentee property and built and sold. Do you have any idea how many lots are offered to me - absentee land? A quarter of an hour before you entered someone called and offered me land in a place where I am dying to buy, in Jabel Mukhaber," which borders the post-1967 neighborhood of East Talpiot in Jerusalem.
Why don't you buy?
"If I go to buy it, an absentee notation will be entered and the land will be taken. If I buy it, the state will come and take away the property."
So you asked to have the Absentee Property Law restored and for the land to be transferred to the Development Authority?
"Requested? We have been demanding that for years."
And the decision last summer was also in response to your explicit request?
"What kind of request? From the day the decision was made, 12 years ago, pressure has been exerted on everyone on the political map who has the slightest influence. Because it means the loss of state land reserves, and for no logical reason. Just like that. The decision could have been made just as easily four years ago. As long as there was a right-wing government, it should have been made. Why it happened is a political consideration."
So it was the demand of the Jewish settlers that led to the Sharansky decision in July 2004?
"No, the opposite. In my opinion, it was the [state] bodies themselves that were behind the demand to restore the previous situation - the custodian of absentee property, the Israel Lands Administration. And in my view, the Jerusalem Municipality, too. It coincided with the timetable of the struggle for the plan by [architect Moshe] Safdie. All the `green' groups objected to the plan, to expand the city to the west. They are looking for other alternatives, and where can they be found? Jerusalem must expand. The alternative lay in the state lands."
But if those lands are transferred to the state, they will be sold by public tender. What will the Jewish settlers gain from that?
"We don't have to gain. We want the state to gain."
Do you trust the state to build neighborhoods for Jews?
"To build a neighborhood for Jews or to use the land for something else - a theater, an amphitheater - I don't care what."
As long as it is not used for Arab building?
"The Arabs have ... is there a lack of land for the Arabs to build on? They have a master plan for 20,000 residential units."