Summary
The Israeli Supreme Court decision of October 22, 1979, agreeing with Arab petitioners that prevailing international law prohibited expropriation of private property for settlement purposes, ordering the Elon Moreh settlement dismantled and its land returned to its Arab owners — and the Gush Emunim pressure campaign that turned compliance into a new state-land settlement regime (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2500-2800).
Details
- Gush Emunim objected strenuously, condemning the government for betraying Jewish rights to the Land of Israel; its leaders argued that unless law or policy changed so substantial amounts of Arab land could be transferred to Jewish control, the result would be “the collapse of the Jewish hold on Judea and Samaria” (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2500-2600).
- The cabinet decided on November 1, 1979, after a five-and-a-half-hour debate, to comply but to find an alternate nearby site, and on November 11 announced expanded settlement on “state land” throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights without limiting itself to security rationales (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2560-2700).
- Within six weeks of the settlers’ peaceful transfer in January 1980, at least five proposals to change the legal status of settlement were under consideration; after a six-week hunger strike by Gush council heads in March-May 1980, the cabinet adopted administrative measures to safeguard existing settlements from legal challenges (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2600-2800).
- Sharon then developed administrative devices to bypass the Court’s restrictions on seizure of land for Jewish settlements which, combined with declarations of large areas as state land, brought an effective end to Arabs’ ability to protect their lands by appealing to the Supreme Court; within a year and a half the settlers virtually ceased raising land acquisition or the territories’ legal status (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2700-2800).
- Lustick’s assessment is that the episode shows how relatively small numbers of fundamentalists, with close ties to powerful Likud and National Religious Party figures, changed important policies, hindered international negotiations and substantially quickened the pace of de facto annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2700-2800).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Elon Moreh, Gush Emunim, Arik Sharon, West Bank