The Knesset will hold a special hearing on Tuesday on the refusal by authorities to enforce Israeli law in eastern Jerusalem.
By Gavriel Queenann, INN
The Knesset on Tuesday will hold a special session on illegal construction – and the abject failure of authorities to ensure order – in eastern Jerusalem.
The hearing comes due to recent admissions by government officials that code and law enforcement in Jerusalem’s eastern neighborhoods is virtually non-existent because the authorities, including police, are afraid of entering the area and applying Israeli sovereignty there.
Lawyer Amir Fischer told Arutz Sheva he filed a petition demanding a government response due to the grim state of affairs in eastern Jerusalem, saying,”For fifteen years they have not enforced the law.”
Fischer added that although his petition focused on the villages of A’akab and Atarot, the reality is pervasive throughout the Jerusalem’s eastern neighborhoods.
The official response to Fischer’s petition said, the “security situation in these neighborhoods is complex, largely influenced by the proximity between these areas to Judea and Samaria. Security forces in the sector routinely encounter violence and demonstrations, throwing rocks, throwing petrol bombs, blocking roads, and laying of pipe bombs, and more.”
The state further argued “the responsibility for enforcing the planning and building laws rests with the Jerusalem municipality and that, due to the security situation, inspectors did not enter these areas for fifteen years. Entrance to the village requires military escorts and requires justification for using such resources.”
“These measures would have to be in place for several weeks at a time to allow inspectors to check building safety,” the state went on to explain. “This means reallocating vast and unique resources exclusively to this issue, which draws security forces away from more important tasks, including ongoing security operations and providing assistance to law enforcement, which increases the risk to public safety.”
In its summary the state replied the problem Fischer raised is known, but not a priority due to limited resources to allocate to the problem. “As to law enforcement priorities, especially in relation to structures built without a permit after all this time, given the existing security situation, there are more serious issues than planning and construction to be dealt with.”
Fischer said he was ashamed of the state’s response saying anarchy was the rule in parts of Israel’s capital and that the question was one of national consequence.
“This affects our sovereignty in Jerusalem,” Fischer said, noting the failure to enforce Israeli law in Jerusalem runs counter to the Basic Law on Jerusalem and undercuts Israeli claims to its own capital.
“The current reality has led to the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, to raise the proposed division of the capital so he can cease providing services in neighborhoods beyond the separation fence – and yet he claims that this idea should be supported even though it means anarchy will reign in these parts of the city.”
Of the Knesset hearing on Tuesday, Fischer said, “It will be difficult to justify the state’s response.” “I am ashamed when I read it. They dragged their and repeatedly asked us the clarify our questions in discussions with the Attorney General before answering – and then only after months had passed.”
“In some cases entire neighborhoods – and buildings as many as twenty stories tall – have been built without permission or supervision,” he added.
“Even in Area C the law should be enforced,” Fischer said, referring to ‘disputed territories’ in Judea and Samaria that remain under Israeli administrative control.
Fischer noted that a similar reality exists in the Negev, the Galilee and in some places in Wadi Ara.
This phenomena is not unique to Israel. No go Muslim areas in a great many Euorpean cities are spreading and European national, provincial/state and local municipal leaders are doing little to nothing to stop it.
See: No-Go Zones for Non-Muslims Multiplying All Over Europe http://technorati.com/politics/article/no-go-zones-for-non-muslims/
and: European ‘No-Go’ Zones for Non-Muslims Proliferating “Occupation Without Tanks or Soldiers”
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2367/european-muslim-no-go-zones
Europe and Israel are both in the grip of fear.
The EU is large enough with a vast non-Muslim majority to buffer it against existential threats from these growing Muslim no go zones, albeit the EU’s way of life is being changed for the worse as is the welfare of all EU citizens, for Israel this phenomena does take on existential dimensions.
That is the point that must be hammered home in the minds of the Knesset and GOI that are charged with the duty of protecting Israel from all threats from outside and within Israel. That point must also be seared into the psyche of all Israelis that they must demand of the GOI that it fulfills, without equivocation, its prime duty to protect the State of Israel and all her citizens from all threats from within and without.
Advocacy organizations like Israpundit, Im Tirtzu and others must up their games and raise their voices louder than they have been in order to increase the chances that the GOI will no longer sit on its hands regarding illegal Arab construction and activities in East Jerusalem and the no go Arab-Muslim Israeli no go zones that are developing there.
Salam Mohamed,
I can trace my family roots to about 4000 years ago in Eretz Israel. Tribe of Levi, Gershonite branch. The Har Habait is our Temple location from thousands of years before Islam was invented.
Your mosques there are crude invasive rape of our Holy Temple location.
As you know you are not by any means “palestineans”. The Roman murderers made up that name for Eretz Israel. For our Land. Not yours Moahamed.
As on many other fraudulent things you pretend to be, you and others invented a “palestinean” people a few years ago. In fact your hamulas are all Arabs that invaded and usurped our land while the Ottoman and British invaders were here.
Just to assure other readers, would you kindly tell us all when did you hamula invade Eretz Israel. Who sold you the lands you claim to “own”.
Who were your presidents before Arafat. Where are the their ancestral homes and since when those are there?
Mohamed, you are impostors, that have stolen land, steal cars, trucks, tractors, cattle, goats and irrigation systems, your agregate has murdered people by the thousands not only Jews but each other as in Iran, Syria, Aza, Libya, SOmalia, Iraq, you name it, where you are, death and destruction ensues.
Nothing will be left of your kind on a very short while. Like others that run and pretend to be refugees, so will run most of the rest.
Easy said now prove it. Palestinians were not indigenous to the land. Some Arabs were and also some Jews were. The San Remo Resolution gave the land to the Jews, not Arabs and the Mandate did likewise. The only way you can get around that is to ignore it. Jerusalem belongs to the Jews not the Palestinian Arabs. Aside from the Mandate, it was conquered in a defensive war. So now it belongs to the Jews. Arabs kill in hatred, Jews kill in self defense.
I have few questions about “Enforcing Law in Eastern Jerusalem” :
In Eastern Jerusalem there is palestinians the indegenous of the country. The problem is not enforcing law, but the problem that ether Eastern or Western of Jerusalam BELONGS TO PALESTINIANS.
The reason that policeman are fair to penetrate (if it is true), that what israel is doing? how many people killed in Palestine to fulfill the Torah counterfeiter, talmud maid by ashkenazes?
Israel killed people in Palestine and yet call them terrorists, children, elderly people, all all who has relation with islam or chrestians and also jewich who are against this illegal and illegitimate system which is called Israel State.
What is built on falsehood is false and that Israel will dispear sooner or later.
It is difficult to believe that any Israel official can say that law enforcement has greater priorities than in asserting sovereignity and imposing Israeli law in its own capital and still keep a straight face. All laws need to be enforced or else repealed. The ever-so-clever diplomats pretend that by ignoring Arab law breakers, they are keeping things quiet and escaping international criticism. But Israel will have to pay for that self-deception by having to deal with Arab facts on the ground and by increased lawlessness as law breakers take courage from the lack of official restraint and go on to greater acts of violence and criminality. Will it take some mass murder of Jews by Jerusalem’s Arabs for the government to open its mouth and say “tut-tut, that was so, so naughty”?
Any govt that does not protect and advance the interests of the Jews has violated its raison d’etre and should be removed. Appeasement of the other is a jewish hallmark born of fear but lasting past its rational need. The prevention of peace is a sign of the sickness of Israels national history and points to a radical change required that no longer functions under the duress and fear of the other.
Two words would have made it even clearer.
ISRAEL FAILING…
Let us count the ways
Enforce the law against murder… by Arabs
Enforce the law against illegal building… by Arabs
Enforce the law against false representation in front of Social Security… by Arabs
Enforce the law against livestock theft… by Arabs
The list is far longer.
BUT lets be fair, the GoI enforces LAWS that do not even exist also…
Only against JEWS.
Of course they are not enforcing the law–the Marxist Israeli government for the most is the biggest problem in Israel today–and let’s not forget–the government comes from the people!
What do you want? Israel rents its Knesset area from the Greek Orthodox Church.
If a country owns an area – and East Jerusalem was legally annexed since citizenship is available to its residents – it has the right to purchase land under eminent domain.
Let the Israel’s fix a just price for the Knesset land, and tell the Greek Church, take the check or not, but the land is ours.
If you cannot annex your own legislature, then why be surpised about your capital?