The Attorney General is appealing to the High Court to establish a “land freeze’ on a Jewish community in Samaria that wants to buy Arab properties for new homes.
A district court previously accepted a petition from the nationalist Regavim organization to order the government to open up the land registry for the community of Pesagot, north of Jerusalem and south of Ofra and Beit El in Samaria.
Pesagot wants to see who owns land next to its borders so that it can buy parcels from their true owners. Many previous purchases of land by Jews from Arabs have been disallowed by the courts because the “sellers” were not the rightful owners.
The land registry records the owners that were registered when Jordan occupied Samaria.
The very idea of Jews in Samaria building new homes but also doing so on land bought from Palestinian Authority Arabs set off the flashing red lights in front of Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, who has been a constant thorn in the side of Jews in Judea and Samaria.
He appealed to the High Court to overturn the district court decision.
After reading through the entire legal lingo, it is clear that Weinstein’s problem is “settlers,”
Although the lower court said that freedom of information demands opening the land registry for Pesagot, Weinstein that the principle does not apply in a “sensitive” area, from the standpoint of “government policy” and of the Civil Administration.
The land registry generally is not open to the public, he added, and the court was wrong for “ignoring the special circumstances of the area.” He also told the High Court that in regards to Arab land that is adjacent to a Jewish community in Samaria, the circumstances are even more special.
In other words, government policy against a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria overrules the law.