Israeli court to rule on property theft

 <http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=628528>
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 10 Sept — Israel’s high court on Tuesday will discuss
whether to apply a controversial law in East Jerusalem which would enable
the Israeli government to seize private Palestinian property. The
Absentees’ Property Law (1950) was originally enacted to transfer the
property of Palestinian refugees, who had been forcibly displaced in 1948,
to the state of Israel. A court hearing on Tuesday will determine whether
the law can be applied to property in East Jerusalem which is owned by
Palestinians who live in the occupied West Bank. In June, Israeli attorney
general Yehuda Weinstein wrote a recommendation to the Israeli government
which supported applying the law to Palestinians residing outside of
Israel’s unilaterally declared Jerusalem boundaries. In effect, the law
would mean that Palestinians forced to flee their Jerusalem properties, who
now reside in the occupied West Bank, would be considered “absentees,”
enabling the Israeli government to seize their land.
  www.maannews.net<http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=628528>

 Palestinian in Kafkaesque battle over family’s hotel
<http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-palestinian-hotel-lawsuit-20130909,0,1873058.story>
ABU DIS, West Bank (Los Angeles Times) 9 Sept by Edmund Sanders — The year
Ali Ayad was born, his father broke ground on a majestic home perched on a
bluff overlooking Jerusalem, with views of the Dead Sea in one direction
and the golden Dome of the Rock in the other. For all of his 59 years,
Ayad’s life has revolved around the 1-acre plot. He played under the olive
trees as a boy and became manager after the home was converted into the
Cliff Hotel. He met his Norwegian wife from behind the reception desk,
married her in the dining room and raised two daughters amid the daily
bustle of visiting tourists and diplomats. But the idyllic life turned into
what he describes as a Kafkaesque nightmare a decade ago after Israel
seized control of the hotel. Using a combination of military orders and a
controversial absentee-owner law, the government kicked him off the
property, banned him from returning and then "confiscated" it as abandoned.