High Court Rulings are treated as ‘Recommendations’
Akiva Eldar has written an article in today’s Haaretz exploring an issue that Ta’ayush knows well: Israeli High Court rulings dealing with Palestinians. Below is the article along with two videos from the past summer in the West Bank with Ta’ayush in which you can see what he is describing in action.
Israel sees court rulings on Palestinian land as mere ‘recommendations’
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
So what if the Supreme Court rules? In Israel those decisions are just recommendations, especially if they deal with Palestinian land. In most enlightened democratic countries, saying that decisions of the courts obligate the state authorities is like stating that the sun rises in the east. But that may not be so for Israel.
Last week, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch had to state that “rulings of this court are not mere recommendations, and the state is obliged to abide by them and to execute them with the necessary speed and efficiency, according to the circumstances of the matter.”
The head of the judicial system added: “In the case before us, the state took the law into its own hands.”
The case dates back to June 2006. The High Court of Justice at that time responded to a petition from Hamoked – the Center for the Defense of the Individual, and instructed the Defense Ministry to move the route of the separation fence near the villages of Azzun and Nabi Ilyas in the northern West Bank.
Aharon Barak, who was then president of the Supreme Court, stated in the ruling that “the petition points to an event that cannot be tolerated according to which the information that was supplied to the court did not reflect all of the considerations that were taken into account by the decision makers.”
High Court Rulings are treated as ‘Recommendations’
Akiva Eldar has written an article in today’s Haaretz exploring an issue that Ta’ayush knows well: Israeli High Court rulings dealing with Palestinians. Below is the article along with two videos from the past summer in the West Bank with Ta’ayush in which you can see what he is describing in action.
Israel sees court rulings on Palestinian land as mere ‘recommendations’
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
So what if the Supreme Court rules? In Israel those decisions are just recommendations, especially if they deal with Palestinian land. In most enlightened democratic countries, saying that decisions of the courts obligate the state authorities is like stating that the sun rises in the east. But that may not be so for Israel.
Last week, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch had to state that “rulings of this court are not mere recommendations, and the state is obliged to abide by them and to execute them with the necessary speed and efficiency, according to the circumstances of the matter.”
The head of the judicial system added: “In the case before us, the state took the law into its own hands.”
The case dates back to June 2006. The High Court of Justice at that time responded to a petition from Hamoked – the Center for the Defense of the Individual, and instructed the Defense Ministry to move the route of the separation fence near the villages of Azzun and Nabi Ilyas in the northern West Bank.
Aharon Barak, who was then president of the Supreme Court, stated in the ruling that “the petition points to an event that cannot be tolerated according to which the information that was supplied to the court did not reflect all of the considerations that were taken into account by the decision makers.”
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Some examples of the disregard of Israeli High Court rulings in the Southern West Bank
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 and is filed under Israel, Jerusalem, Southern Hebron Hills, West Bank. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.