Beelzebub
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- May 6, 2014
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The legal watchdog group Yesh Din petitioned the High Court of Justice on Thursday against Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein’s decision not to prosecute officials who admitted to illegally constructing a sewage treatment plant for the West Bank settlement of Ofra.
According to Weinstein, because the state has not brought criminal charges against illegal construction over the years in the West Bank, even the few individuals who have been investigated cannot be charged because that would be unfairly discriminating against them in relation to others who have not been charged.
In February 2012 the chairman of the Yesha Council of Settlements and then-deputy chairman of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, Avi Roeh, was interrogated under warning by the police southern district fraud squad on charges of constructing a sewage purification plant for the settlement of Ofra on private Palestinian land and issuing fraudulent permits to do so. Roeh admitted to the police that this was the case, but Weinstein declined to prosecute Roeh and then-regional council chairman Pinhas Wallerstein.
This ran contrary to Weinstein’s repeated public statements about the need to prosecute those responsible for illegal construction in the West Bank.
The facility in question was built in 2008, when threats of fines and prosecution over the channeling of sewage into a nearby wadi led Wallerstein and Roeh to build a waste treatment facility on lands belonging to the village of Silwad without obtaining the proper permits. The plant was funded by the state to the tune of millions of shekels. When the Civil Administration issued a stop-work order, the council issued a fictitious construction permit to the firm building the facility.
In 2008, the owners of the land and Yesh Din petitioned the High Court against the construction and the state pledged not to operate the facility until its legal status was put to rest. Yesh Din also brought a civil suit, still pending, and filed a police complaint in the matter.
Roeh told police during questioning that the permit he had signed was “not final” because he knew the land was privately owned.
AG No indictments over illegal West Bank construction - Diplomacy and Defense Israel News Haaretz
Israel is acting illegally.
Seems to be no doubt about it.
What a pity. The people there had so much hope and a lot of potential. Now, because of repeated and unabated illegality like this they cannot be trusted to run a state without stealing neighbouring land.
Time to close Israel down.
According to Weinstein, because the state has not brought criminal charges against illegal construction over the years in the West Bank, even the few individuals who have been investigated cannot be charged because that would be unfairly discriminating against them in relation to others who have not been charged.
In February 2012 the chairman of the Yesha Council of Settlements and then-deputy chairman of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, Avi Roeh, was interrogated under warning by the police southern district fraud squad on charges of constructing a sewage purification plant for the settlement of Ofra on private Palestinian land and issuing fraudulent permits to do so. Roeh admitted to the police that this was the case, but Weinstein declined to prosecute Roeh and then-regional council chairman Pinhas Wallerstein.
This ran contrary to Weinstein’s repeated public statements about the need to prosecute those responsible for illegal construction in the West Bank.
The facility in question was built in 2008, when threats of fines and prosecution over the channeling of sewage into a nearby wadi led Wallerstein and Roeh to build a waste treatment facility on lands belonging to the village of Silwad without obtaining the proper permits. The plant was funded by the state to the tune of millions of shekels. When the Civil Administration issued a stop-work order, the council issued a fictitious construction permit to the firm building the facility.
In 2008, the owners of the land and Yesh Din petitioned the High Court against the construction and the state pledged not to operate the facility until its legal status was put to rest. Yesh Din also brought a civil suit, still pending, and filed a police complaint in the matter.
Roeh told police during questioning that the permit he had signed was “not final” because he knew the land was privately owned.
AG No indictments over illegal West Bank construction - Diplomacy and Defense Israel News Haaretz
Israel is acting illegally.
Seems to be no doubt about it.
What a pity. The people there had so much hope and a lot of potential. Now, because of repeated and unabated illegality like this they cannot be trusted to run a state without stealing neighbouring land.
Time to close Israel down.
