Marking another milestone in a long legal battle for Jewish rights in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood of Jerusalem, the Supreme Court has ordered yet another eviction of Arab squatters and the return of a home to its Jewish owners. The home in question is located in the renewed ancient Jewish neighborhood built around the 2,000-year-old gravesite and tomb of the Tannaitic Sage Shimon HaTzaddik.
The neighborhood comprises the Nachalat Shimon area, populated through the 1940's by individual Jewish families, and the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood, owned by the Vaad HaEdah HaSfaradit (Sephardic Congregation Council). Both were abandoned in light of Arab attacks during the War of Independence, and later became populated by Jordanian Arabs. The latest court ruling recognizes the Jewish ownership of houses there, and orders the Arab squatters removed.
This past Thursday, far-left MK Yossi Beilin of Meretz indicated that the tricky problem of "Arab refugees" would have to be solved, at least partially, by European countries. Speaking in a closed session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Beilin took the unprecedented step of telling a group of European ambassadors that their countries must announce how many refugees, and their descendants, they would be willing to absorb as part of a future Israeli-Arab peace agreement
Elon is the author of the "Right Road to Peace" plan, also known as the Israel Initiative, which he has long promoted as an alternative to the accepted Roadmap two-state solution. "The establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza will only prolong the Arab-Israeli conflict and exact a heavy toll in human life," Elon has often explained. "The establishment of such a state will not solve the real problems that perpetuate the conflict: The Palestinian demand for the right of return of refugees to areas within the State of Israel, the rehabilitation of the refugees, the status of Jerusalem, and the nature of the Palestinian state and its borders. Within a short time, these unresolved problems will resurface and draw the region into yet another war."