11/2/2005
Land marks

Someone once wrote that there is no pleasure like the relief from pain. The
pain of learning that the Israeli government has, since last July, been
secretly expropriating (ie confiscating without paying one shekel of
compensation) the land and property, let alone livelihood, of about 2,000
owners of property in East Jerusalem, was certainly alleviated by hearing
that the Attorney-General, Menachem Mazuz, has cancelled the decision that
permitted this policy to go forward (JC, February 4).

But it's not over yet, and many questions are left unanswered. How are the
victims of this policy to get their property back? Do they still have to go
to law, and will they ever get compensation for the expenses they have
incurred, or for the loss of their income, or for the trauma of going
through this nightmare, a nightmare that so many Jewish people have passed
though elsewhere (and not so long ago!).

Has Natan Sharansky learnt so little from his years in a Soviet jail that he
should initiate a policy of legislative theft which Menachem Begin would
never for a moment have countenanced?

The greatest question, however, remains: how did the government of a country
whose founding constitutional document, the Declaration of Independence,
ranks as a great ethical document - and of a people who are enjoined 36
times to have the same law for themselves and for the stranger - ever get to
the point of behaving like a thief in the night, in order to commit daylight
robbery.

Fred Barschak,
London NW6.