Adalah Submits Final Arguments to Haifa District Court to Cancel Master Plan that Transforms Over 4,100 Dunams of Daliyat al-Carmel's Agricultural Land into the "National Park and Har Shukiv Forest"
On 13 May 2010, Adalah submitted its final arguments to the Haifa District Court (for Administrative Affairs) on a petition filed on behalf of 24 Arab residents of Daliyat al-Carmel to cancel the Master Plan (c/1209): "National Park and Har Shukiv Forest". The plan would transform over 4,100 dunams of private land owned by the residents of the village from agricultural land into a national park and forest. It would dispossess the owners of their lands and incorporate them into the national park and forest in question, and eliminate the only possibility for Daliyat al-Carmel's future development. In the summation, Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara addressed all the claims put forward by the state respondents in defense of the Master Plan in question.
In the final arguments, Adalah emphasized the illegality of the Master Plan and the lack of authority to convert private agricultural land into a public park, as these measures contradict all of the national and district plans that apply to this area. Over the years, all the different plans have preserved this land as private agricultural land, including the national plan of public parks and gardens. According to the Planning and Building Law - 1965, the national master plans are ranked the highest followed by the district and local plans. Therefore, the District Master Plan (c/1209) cannot change the National Plan, which keeps the land as agricultural.
Following a petition filed by Adalah in October 2007 on behalf of the affected landowners against the National Committee for Planning and Building, the Nature Reserves and National Parks Authority and the Israel Land Authority (ILA), 881 dunams were removed from the plan in question and retained as privately-owned agricultural land. However, Adalah maintains that this step creates an unjustified distinction between the owners of the land that remained agricultural and the owners whose land was incorporated into the national park and the forest, particularly as the plots of land are adjacent to each other and there is no justification for such discrimination.
Adalah rejected the authorities' claim that the remaining land is located in the heart of the park and removing it will divide the park and prevent territorial contiguity. With detailed maps, Adalah argued to the court that the remaining lands are located on the outskirts of the park and are adjacent to the lands removed from the plan, and that removing the rest of the land from the plan would not affect the park.
Adalah highlighted that transforming the land into a park aims to reduce the possibility of the future development of the village of Daliyat al-Carmel. These lands constitute the remaining lands of the village, after all of the rest of its lands were confiscated by the state.
Background
The master plan was drafted in 2002 and covers large areas of land around Daliyat al-Carmel, an Arab Druze village in the north of Israel surrounded by nature reserves and national parks. The implementation of the master plan would therefore render the future development of Daliyat al-Carmel extremely difficult, except in the western part of the area, which consists of privately-owned land.
The petitioners argued that the owners of the land have been cultivating it since before the establishment of the State of Israel and that the land contains no national resources to justify its appropriation. Therefore, the explanations provided in the master plan are essentially void and there is no logic behind the declaration of the land as a national park or forest.
The petitioners emphasized that none of the local, regional or national master plans previously prepared for the area have declared these lands a nature reserve or national park. Rather, the lands were excluded in order that they would be put to the future use of the development of Daliyat al-Carmel and in order to prevent any violation of the rights of the landowners.
Furthermore, the master plan is inconsistent with the National Parks and Nature Reserves Law - 1998, argued the petitioners, and the Authority for Nature Reserves and National Parks and the JNF do not have the power to draw up this plan. Attorney Bishara stressed in the petition that, "The objective of this master plan is to preclude the development of Daliyat al-Carmel on the land owned by its population, and violates their property rights and their right to a livelihood."
Case Citation: Haifa District Court, A.P. 4377/07, Maqaldah Safi, et al. v. The National Council for Planning and Building (pending)
