The Letter (Hebrew)
On 29 June 2007, Adalah sent a letter to Attorney General (AG) Menachem Mazuz and the Director of the Israel Land Administration (ILA), Yaakov Efrati, demanding that the AG open an immediate investigation into the demolition of nine buildings in the unrecognized village of Umm el-Hieran in the Naqab (Negev). Adalah further demanded that all individuals responsible for the illegal home demolitions, which were carried out on 25 June 2007, face disciplinary proceedings within the ILA.
Nine of the twenty houses demolished belonged to the Abu Qian family. Adalah is representing the family in a lawsuit filed against them by the ILA to the Beer el-Sabe Magistrates’ Court to evacuate the buildings and clear the land on which they stand. This lawsuit was one of tens of evacuation lawsuits filed by the state against all the Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel residing in the village (approximately 1,000 people). In August 2004, the Beer el-Sabe Magistrates’ Court issued an ex parte home demolition and evacuation order, following which Adalah, on behalf of members of the Abu Qian family, submitted a request to annul the order, and not to implement the demolition process pending a decision on this request. In response, in October 2006 the court issued an order to delay the implementation of the demolition and evacuation order.
Despite this court decision, the ILA nevertheless began to initiate procedures to implement the demolition and evacuation order. When the family learned of this, Adalah approached the ILA’s lawyers on behalf of the family demanding a halt to the demolition process. In response, the ILA’s lawyers recommended that the demolition procedures should be stopped.
However, on 25 June 2007, a team workers hired by the ILA came to Umm el-Hieran with an escort of “security” forces, some of them wearing orange uniforms, ready to demolish houses in the village. The Abu Qian family handed them the court order to delay the implementation of the demolition process and asked them not to demolish the buildings. The response of the government official in charge at the site was that the court’s order was old and of no assistance to them. The workers then proceeded to demolish nine buildings. That morning, Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara sent an urgent letter to the ILA and its legal division, referring them to the court’s order and demanding that demolition operations not be undertaken. However, Adalah did not and has yet to receive a reply, and the demolitions of the buildings went ahead.
In the letter to the AG and the Director of the ILA, Adalah stated that, “Despite the decision of the court to delay the implementation of the demolition and evacuation order, the order to delay the demolition process, our correspondence with the ILA on this subject, and the court’s decision that the Abu Qian family showed to those who carried out the demolition, one of them decided to afford himself a higher status than that of the legislative authority and the judicial authority and to demolish the houses.”
In the letter, Attorney Bishara further argued that the demolition of the houses stripped their owners of their constitutional right to defend themselves against the evacuation lawsuits filed against them and of their right to representation before the court, and they no longer have a legal opportunity to defend themselves or to safeguard their homes. “The demolition of the homes violates the rule of law and the authority of the court; this violation is dangerous in the extreme because it comes from an administrative authority such as the ILA,” argued Adalah.