High Court rejects settlers petition to save 6 of 15 outpost homes

The High Court of Justice rejects a petition from the residents of the illegal Netiv Ha’avot outpost to spare six of the 15 houses slated for demolition, and rules that all homes in the Gush Etzion neighborhood must be razed.

While none of the homes in the outpost on the outskirts of the Elazar settlement sits entirely on private Palestinian land, six of them do so for a matter of feet.

In their petition last month, for which the State Attorney’s Office indicated its support, the residents claimed that those six houses need not be razed. Instead, they presented an alternative solution, offering to demolish only the “problematic parts” of the homes that were found to have crossed over onto private Palestinian land, thereby allowing the remainder of those buildings to stay intact.

But the High Court sided against the state opinion, and ruled that all 15 homes must be demolished by March 8, 2018, as originally sanctioned.

— Jacob Magid