The Washington Post brings an interesting dispatch from the Middle East. Joel Greenberg, Israeli Plan to Move West Bank Bedouin Stirs Controversy, Washington Post, December 12, 2011 – click here. The Israelis are talking about moving some Bedouin squatter encampments. They are described by the Washington Post as containing “about 2,000 Palestinian Bedouins living in the desert hills east of Jerusalem.”
“The hills are dotted with more than 20 encampments of Bedouins, formerly nomadic goat and sheep herders who migrated from Israel’s southern Negev region in the early 1950s to the West Bank. Their hamlets, consist…of groups of corrugated metal and wooden shacks covered with plastic sheeting. . .” (emphasis added).
So two things appear to be uncontested: first, that under American law those are slums, and as such ideal candidates for elimination and redevelopment, and second, that those Bedouins do not own the land in question, having moved onto it in the 1950s without claim of title. The Post does not reveal the nature of that land, but it appears to be so-called miri land — a type of state land, so that under our law one coulld not acquire prescriptive rights in it. So it would appear that those formerly nomadic Bedouins who have become squatters, have no property interest in the land in question, and it is difficult to see how they get to object to being asked to move from land on which they are squatting. If this were our government-owned land, all those poor folks would get would be the back of Uncle Sam’s hand, and an order to move.
But, hey man, it’s the Middle East where according to the liberal American press (of which the grandees of the Washington Post are charter members) Israel is always wrong and the Arabs always right, even when they have no legal leg to stand on. Moreover, the plan is to move the squatter Bedouins from the area where some of their encampments are in army firing zones, or on state land that has not been licensed for construction, and move them to an area near the exurban town of Ma’ale Adumim where they would be able to build legally with access to water, electricity and government services.
This is bad? We wish we could get a deal like that for our clients who find themselves living on government land without any right to live there, and are told to move.
And saving the best (in a manner of speaking) for the last, wasn’t it the Washingto Post that in 2005 editorialized after Kelo that it was hunky-dory to kick out lower middle-class folks out of the homes they did own? And telling them to take a hike because the City of New London and the Pfizer pharmaceutical corporation wanted to make money by replacing their modest homes with upscale shops, condos and a five-star hotel, in order to reap the benefit of higher taxes and private revenues?
Moral: At the Washington Post it all depends on whose ox winds up turning on the spit.