The authorities responsible for the disaster at Mount Meron acted innocently. Every one of them was sure it was the other's responsibility, and that everything was all right. The parties responsible for the nauseating Gilboa Prison pimping scandal and prisoner escape were acting innocently, and never thought that something like this could be taking place under their very noses. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acted innocently and thought that friends could give elected officials presents, spending as much as they wanted for as long as they wanted.
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It never occurred to the settlers at Mitzpe Kramim, which lies between Ramallah and Jericho and is on a list of illegal settlements to be evacuated that the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon submitted to the Bush administration, that they might be sitting on privately-owned Palestinian land. Why should it? They decided, on their own, to settle there, assuming that the government would ultimately accept their actions, and never guessed they might be on land that belonged to someone else.
We're lucky that Jewish law provides for cases in which a person sells something that belongs to someone else. The rule seeks to harm the true owner and the seller as little as possible, with the underlying principle being that they made an "honest mistake." If a judge is convinced that the seller was not aware that he wasn't the true owner, he or she must find a solution that compensates not only the true owners, but also those who are in possession of the asset, even though it is not theirs.
This is certainly an ancient, beautiful concept, which accounts for rare instances in which both sides are right and could both be wronged. The problem is that "honest mistakes" are hard to prove, and the idea is applied to many non-innocent cases. Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Palestinian land owners, but recently overturned its own decision by decided to allow settlers to stay there, on the principle of "honest" intentions.
But there is nothing innocent about the settlement issue. Since the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel's governments have pulled out a weak argument that the Fourth Geneva Convention can be violated when it comes to establishing settlements on territories we occupied. Why? Because there had been no sovereign authority recognized by the world in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, and therefore they cannot be considered occupied territory and citizens of the occupying country can be sent there to settle.
The world did not accept the Israeli argument, but our court adopted it. And then went on to rule, under former Chief Justice Meir Shamgar, that the whole issue of the settlements must be tried when Israel enters into negotiations about a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians and that in the meantime, Israel can settle away. Many settlers see themselves as the heirs of the Homa U'Migdal pioneers from 1936, who set up communities around antennas, around work camps, or around archaeological sites, under the nose of the British Mandate government, and turned what were supposed to be temporary enclaves into permanent communities. Sometimes they did so behind the government's back, and sometimes over its stringent opposition, but it was never an "honest mistake."
Israel created legal mechanisms that have allowed for perverted rulings, like the one on Mitzpe Kramim. The implementation of the ancient Jewish rule cannot be explained to any serious legal official anywhere in the world. The difference between settlements that are legal and illegal cannot b4 explained in the context of Israeli law. We pay a very steep price in terms of our image for the system we built, and this is one of the reasons (second only to the danger of our becoming a Jewish minority that rules over a Palestinian majority) that mandates that we reach a deal with the Palestinians as soon as possible, and put an end to the system that was never an "honest mistake."
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