While the countdown is underway for residents of Migron, it appears another area community may be uprooted first, the Ulpana neighborhood in Yishuv Beit El. The latter is slated for removal next month. Residents insist the move is unjustified, explaining they have the documentation proving their claim that the land upon which the homes were built was legally purchased.

Dozens of neighborhood residents held an emergency kenos with the mora d’asra of the community, HaGaon HaRav Zalman Baruch Melamed Shlita, as well as with a number of MKs and prominent individuals, including MK Yaakov Katz, who is the man credited with building the community of Beit El.

HaMevaser reports they decided to release a statement to the media, that the neighborhood was constructed 12 years ago in memory of Ita and her son Ephraim Tzur HY”D, veteran members of Beit El murdered in a terror attack. They remain confident that after speaking with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and 30 cabinet ministers and members of Knesset who visited the community, that they will not permit the neighborhood to be destroyed. There are currently about thirty families including 150 children living in the Ulpana neighborhood.

The neighborhood was built with the support of governments, including the 199 administration of Ehud Barak, with that administration granting incentives to young couples to move into the new buildings. National governments approved the community, built an access road, connected it to the national electric grid, and paved the inside with sidewalks and streets as well as approving gas and telephone lines.

The Yesh Din organization petitioned the High Court of Justice in 2008 on behalf of an Arab man who maintains that during the 19 years of Jordanian occupation in the area (1948-1967), the land was in his name and not the name of the Arab man the community purchased the land from. He referred to an area of the neighborhood on which five buildings are standing. About a year ago, the state prosecutor told the court that based on a decision of the ministerial committee addressing settlement, the area in dispute, home to 30 families, would be destroyed by May 1, 2012. Members of this committee included Benny Begin, Moshe Ya’alon, Ehud Barak and cabinet secretary Tzvi Hauser.

The builder and developer of the project then challenged the man who said the land was registered in his name during the Jordanian occupation, insisting he is a fraud and the land was indeed registered to the man from whom the area was purchased. He took the case to the Jerusalem District Court which has not moved ahead since the man, the one who said he owned it from the occupation period, seems to have vanished.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)