The High Court on Sunday rejected the settlement deal between the State and the residents of the outpost Migron, but allowed an extension of their evacuation date until August this year, and not next weekend, as was the court’s original decision.
The decision won the support of the entire panel, headed by the new Chief Justice Asher Grunis, along with Justices Miriam Naor and Salim Jubran.
The Court stated that “Although it possesses an inherent power to extend the date of executing its decisions, this power must be used with care, because the extension may leave in place an illegal situation, harm the reliance principle, as well as the finality principle, and thus damage of rule of law.”
“At stake is one of the toughest and most exceptional cases with regard to the illegal outposts,” the justices clarified, adding that “when the state announces time and again that it thinks this is an illegal outpost with no legal possibility of accepting its long-term existence.”
But Deputy Knesset Speaker MK Danny Danon (Likud) said the Supreme Court’s decision to reject the State’s agreement with Migron was unacceptable. “The court is not allowed to boot-lock the state. I’ve I turned to Knesset members to convene the Knesset during the winter recess and pass the needed regulatory law. If the court does not approve the Migron agreement, we will confirm it via primary legislation.”
Some 13 years after its establishment, and six years after the court case on the settlement’s legality began, all the residents of Migron, a large outposts in Judea and Samaria, arrived on Sunday night, March 12, at their local synagogue and signed an affidavit to be submitted to the High Court, committing to leave their homes voluntarily and without any forced eviction in three and a half years.
Under the agreement, immediately after receiving the High Court approval, an expedited process of planning an alternative neighborhood for the residents of Migron would have commenced. The new site was going to be built two kilometers away from the current position of the outpost.
At the conclusion of its decision, the Court repeated its wish the residents of Migron come to their senses throat and accept their obligation not to be seen as outlaws. The court commented that “the obligation to maintain a ruling is not a matter of choice.”
The Migron residents’ Action Committee released the statement: “The residents of Migron received today the harsh verdict, which begins with the libel of the land being privately owned, and ends with the deportation of peace loving people. We are confident that Israel’s government and its representative Minister Begin will manage to find a suitable solution to the newly created situation, in which the government which sendt its citizens to settle on a piece of land is now forced to drive them off by order of the Supreme Court.”
MK Uri Orbach (The Jewish Home) told the Jewish Press Israel should go ahead and cancel the upcoming elections, since those would make no difference anyway. “The High Court will move in whenever it sees fit to subvert the will of government and the Knesset as it sees fit. It makes me angry.”
MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) said the Migron compromise was a disaster for the settlement movement, and therefore “I do not shed a tear for it. Still, the decision illustrates the hypocrisy and racism of the Supreme Court, which has been keeping mum over illegal construction which is so rampant in the Arab sector.”
MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) said the Supreme Court decision to reject the Migron compromise is tantamount to “spitting in the face of the settlement movement and of the government, which have found the way to obey the original verdict while avoiding confrontation. I am ashamed!”