Court Didn’t Mandate Hebron House Eviction

In your December 19 editorial “Hebron and the Rule of Law,” regarding the evictions of Jews from Hebron‘s Beit HaShalom, you write: “In November the court authorized the army to evict the squatters. The troops went in to enforce the law.” That is misleading.

The Supreme Court did not order the eviction of the inhabitants of Beit HaShalom, a house whose purchase by an American Jew is currently being disputed in court. As such, the eviction did not take place pursuant to an effort to enforce such a ruling. Rather, as former Israeli Supreme Court justice Yaakov Turkel has said: “The ruling does not obligate the state to act to evacuate the Jews, but rather gives them the freedom to decide whether to do so or not.”

Indeed, 49 Knesset members signed onto a letter sent to Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter explaining that the court ruling “did not obligate the government to evict” the house’s residents. Signatories included minister Rafi Eitan; Kadima’s Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset’s defense and security committee, and six chairmen of political parties.

Morton A. Klein
National President
Zionist Organization of America
New York, N.Y.