The Judge Is, I Suggest, In Error

I sent the following comment to Ha'Aretz in response to this report on a decision made by one Judge Boaz Okun.

First, the report's main points and then my comment.

a)

The Tel Aviv District Court issued on Monday a groundbreaking ruling stating that the Absentee Property Law could not be applied to West Bank lands abandoned by Palestinians during the 1967 Six Day War.

Monday's ruling, handed by judge Boaz Okun, holds that the state could not declare Palestinian land which was abandoned following the 1967 war as "land under Israel's effective sovereignty." The ruling states that declaring lands owned by West Bank Palestinians as "absentee property" was illegal and no longer in effect.

"This law was passed in a certain reality," Okun wrote in his ruling, "but following the Six day War the entire West Bank population passed under effective Israeli control. Applying this law under these conditions could create a limbo, in which land outside the rule of Israeli law can be annexed by Israel, while its owners are not defined as residents of an enemy state."

"This is a type of judicial stunt which does not reflect any reality," Okun said.


b)

I am not a lawyer but Prof. Yehuda Blum's approach (see: Yehuda Blum, The Juridical Status of Jerusalem, Jerusalem Papers on Peace Problem, 2, The Hebrew University, Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, Jerusalem, Israel, February 1974, pp. 22-23 and also: Galchinsky, Michael "The Jewish Settlements in the West Bank: International Law and Israeli Jurisprudence" Israel Studies - Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2004, pp. 115-136) would run counter to Judge Okun.

Since the Arabs never signed a peace treaty and by invading Israel in 1948 and not accepting the 1947 UN partition resolution, they have no legal leg to stand on. And since the 1922 League of Nations decision assigned all of the land west of the Jordan River as the Jewish National home to be recontituted, the judge, I would suggest, is in error.

Talia Einhorn's opinion is also important as is that of Howard Grief.