The dispute concerns the ownership of a residential building known as Beit Bakri in Hebron, which was confiscated from its Palestinian owners by groups who settled in the city in the early 2000s.
An Israeli court ruled in 2019 that the building be vacated by settlers and pay a substantial fee to the Palestinian owners, but ongoing legal wrangling, and the controversial purchase by the KKL of the building shortly before the ruling, led to this. made the process complicated.
A settler organization involved in the seizure of Beit Bakri has now requested that the KKL provide funding for its legal needs in the case, which has sparked a deep political controversy within the organisation.
Centrist and leftist representatives in KKL are strongly opposing the Board of Directors’ request that it provide funds for the legal needs of a settler organization involved in illegal confiscation of property, saying that doing so would politicize KKL as a At issue, Israel’s control of the West Bank and Hebron in particular, is hotly disputed within Israel and the global Jewish community.
View of a house of Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron on August 26, 2021. (credit: Gershon Ellison/Flash90)
Right-wing factions in the KKL insist that the organization is merely protecting its assets and that the organization has historically been involved in land purchases in the West Bank.
The dispute began in 2001, when the Palestinian owners of the Beit Bakri multi-storey residential building in the city’s Tel Rumeda district, close to the Jewish neighborhood, were forced to leave due to sanctions imposed by Israeli security forces on Palestinian residents. . time, during the Second Intifada, and what he said was the persecution of the building owners by Jewish residents.
Settlers groups took control of the building after this development and eventually engaged in fraudulent purchases of the property, but this was later annulled in 2019 by a decision by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court, which allowed settlers to vacate the property and allow Palestinians Ordered the owners to pay more. Over NIS 600,000 in usage fees and legal costs.
In July this year, the Jerusalem magistrate’s court had put a stay, but required that the KKL-owned ground floor person must pay NIS 180,000 as a guarantee that he would honor his final verdict.
The Association for the Renewal of the Jewish Community in Hebron which has been involved in claiming rights over Beit Bakri later filed a request to the KKL that the organization pay a guarantee.
In September, the KKL executive rejected the request by a vote of six to five votes, but in October it was brought back and approved narrowly through the current dual voting privilege of KKL president Avram Duvdevani.
However, KKL’s representatives have appealed against the decision in the board of directors and the issue is now to be voted on Thursday.
Meanwhile, KKL has already paid around NIS 110,000 for the guarantee, while another NIS 72,000 is due.
Gadi Pearl, a member of the KKL Board of Directors for Masorti Olami, says that allowing the payment of the guarantee would deeply politicize the KKL on an issue that is far from the consensus within Israel and the Jewish diaspora, both of which the KKL should act. . on behalf of.
“Regardless of any political views, there is no doubt that the house should not have been bought in the first place,” Pearl said.
“To pay the guarantee would now be a de facto stamp of approval for both sitting in the Beit Bakri and the subsequent controversial purchase of this property,” he added, adding that it would be “unfair to the Palestinian owners and unfair to the Jews.” People represented in KKL. “
Pearl argued that the Association for the Renewal of the Jewish Community in Hebron has the resources to pay the guarantee; Settlement groups got embroiled in legal proceedings before KKL bought the property; And KKL should never have bought the property earlier.
“I’m Trying to Stop KKL” [from] are becoming political, but those who want to fund these goals are forcing it to become so and ruining its position of consensus within the Jewish people,” Pearl said.
David Etzioni, a member of the KKL executive of the Likud party, who requested the directorate to pay the guarantee, said the issue was simply that the KKL as an organization had a responsibility to protect its assets and dismissed the notion. Guaranteed paying that tax was a political move.
Etzioni said the KKL would act in the same way as just about any other property it had elsewhere and that the only reason to oppose it was that the property in question is in Hebron, a highly competitive and controversial city.
“They are bringing politics to KKL. A company’s first responsibility is to protect itself and its assets,” Etzioni insists, adding that KKL has purchased land in the east in Judea and Samaria and should continue to do so.
The Board of Directors currently has 17 right-wing members and 15 centrist, progressive Jewish and left-wing members, as well as seven representatives of Zionist organizations including Hadassah, Vizo, Bani Britt, Naamat, Imunah, the World Sephardi Federation and Maccabi.
The centrist and leftist groups are hoping that those organizations take a stand on the issue and withhold approval for the payment of the guarantee.