The Israeli Housing Ministry expropriated land belonging to residents from West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Beit Sahour in accordance with the “absentee law” for the construction of more than 1,000 housing units in East Jerusalem’s Har Homa settlement in Jabal Abu Ghneim.

The ministry’s move is in violation of both an instruction from the Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to stop applying the absentee law in East Jerusalem and explicit promises by Israel to the United States that it will not apply that law in Jerusalem’s eastern quarters.

Israel’s 1950 absentee property law states that land and homes left behind by Arabs as of Nov. 29, 1947 are deemed “enemy” property and are liable for expropriation by Israeli authorities.

The Housing Ministry issued a tender last December to build 307 units to complete Stage B of the Har Homa plan. The tender evoked Arab and international outrage, and US and Palestinian pressure to block the construction. It is now evident that most of the land for the 307 units belong to residents of Beit Sahour who were declared absentee, so their lands were taken by the state without compensation or court hearings.

The daily Haaretz said that according to ownership maps of the area, of the 24-dunam (6 acres) area slated for the construction, 18 dunam belonged to Beit Sahour residents and six were expropriated from Jewish owners. A total of 188 of the apartments are slated for construction on the land of absentee owners.

The application of the absentee law to East Jerusalem has been controversial ever since the annexation of the eastern part of the city after the June 1967 War. Former Israeli Attorney General Meir Shemgar said after the war that the annexation of East Jerusalem did not give Israeli authorities the right to seize a person’s property and recommended that the absentee law not be applied. Over the years there have been changes in this position, and in late 2004 the Israeli Ministerial Committee on Jerusalem Affairs decided to apply the absentee law to the stretch of land in question.

The US administration demanded the decision be changed after it was published in Haaretz. As a result, in February 2005 Mazuz gave instructions to adopt the 1968 Shemgar opinion and ordered the “immediate cessation of the application of the absentee law on East Jerusalem assets.” Apparently that instruction has been ignored.

In addition to the 307 housing units, Israel apparently plans to build another 1,000 apartments on absentee lands in Stage 3 of Har Homa. The construction of the new neighborhood was approved by the Jerusalem municipal planning board. The Housing Ministry is moving forward, even after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert directed that he be apprised of any construction plans in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The new neighborhood is planned for east of the already constructed Har Homa, in close proximity to Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. If built, it would isolate Bethlehem completely from the Palestinian neighborhoods south of Jerusalem.

In a hearing by the Jerusalem planning board last January, city council member Pepe Alalu opposed the plan, saying the area could serve to expand Beit Sahour, which suffers from overcrowding. In response, the Jerusalem district planner for the Housing Ministry, Ayalon Bernard, said the Palestinian residents of Sur Baher do not own the Stage 3 and Stage 4 Har Homa lands, which belong to Bethlehemites. The landowners are absentees.

The land is farmland owned by about 600 Beit Sahour families who worked the plots until the construction of the separation fence in the area.

According to Haaretz, the Justice Ministry preferred to ignore the apparent contradiction between Mazuz’s 2005 instructions and what appears to be sweeping application of the absentee law in order to build new neighborhoods at Har Homa.

The Justice Ministry said in a response that the land for the Har Homa construction was expropriated for public purposes from Jewish owners also, and that the absentee issue is irrelevant.

In its response, the Housing Ministry said: “There is no decision to stop the construction of Har Homa Stage 3 and technical amendments to the plans will be submitted to the district planning committee in the coming months to enable approval of the plan.”