After 12 Years Jewish Community Town of Kamoun Still Obstructing Arab Sawa'ed Family from Obtaining Building Permits for their Land
On 15 January 2009, Adalah filed an appeal on behalf of the Sawa'ed family to the Regional Planning and Building Appeals Committee – Northern District against a decision of the Misgav Regional Council's Local Planning and Building Committee to continue to prohibit the Sawa'ed family from obtaining licenses for building in the Jewish community town of Kamoun.
Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara, who submitted the appeal, emphasized that the local committee has deliberately placed numerous obstacles to block the connection of the Sawa’eds' land to infrastructure networks, and then used the fact that the land is not connected as a reason not to issue a building permit. Such conduct demonstrates that the committee’s considerations in deciding on the Sawa'eds' application were not objective but in fact racist, Adalah argued.
The Sawa'eds' plot of land is located in the Jewish community town of Kamoun located in the Galilee in the north of Israel. The local committee justified its decision on the grounds that the land is not connected to the sewage system and will not be for the foreseeable future. In addition, the committee also rejected a proposal put forward by the family to dig a pit to dispose of the sewage as a temporary solution until the necessary pipe work can be completed. The committee claimed that such a solution was in breach of the guidelines of various ministries and would pollute the environment and groundwater in the area. This solution has been used in all houses in the neighboring Arab village of Kammaneh.
In 1997, Mr. Adel Sawa’ed and his wife Itaaf, Palestinian citizens of Israel, applied for a permit to build a house on a plot of land in their private ownership in Kamoun. From 1997 to August 2004, the local planning and building committee refused to examine the application, and requested that the family prepare a large number of amendments to their application. The committee also asked the Sawa’eds to obtain the consent of the Israel Land Administration (ILA), which owns half a square meter of the 1,800 square meter plot. On 4 August 2004, the local committee decided to reject the family’s application for a building permit and suggested that they exchange their land with an alternative plot in the Arab village of Kammaneh, because if they were to live in the Jewish town this “would create social problems”. After this decision was issued, Adalah filed an appeal to the Regional Planning and Building Committee – Northern District, which overturned the local committee’s decision and ordered it to examine the Sawa'eds' application in a positive spirit. At that stage, relatives of the Sawa’ed family, Mr. Mohammed Sawa’ed and his wife Sukeina Sawa’ed filed an additional request for a permit to build a house on the same plot of land.
Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara contended in the appeal that the Sawa’ed family had done all that was demanded of them over the course of the past 12 years in order to obtain a building permit, but that in spite of their efforts the local planning committee had stalled in providing the requested permit in order to prevent them from building a house in Kamoun because they are Arabs.
