On April 1, 2007,
HaMoked and Rabbis for Human Rights filed petitions to the High Court of Justice (HCJ) on behalf of 36 land and livestock owners in a bid to cancel the land seizure order issued by the military for the construction of a separation wall section to be built across the lands of 41 Palestinian families in the Masafer Yatta hamlets in the south Hebron Hills. The petitioners asserted that the wall’s planned route would dispossess hundreds of people of their sources of livelihood, damage the locals’ water resources, and disrupt the ecological balance in the area. The petitioner also argued that the military seizure order was illegal, inter alia, because building a separation wall on the route would constitute de-facto annexation in violation of international humanitarian law. The petitioners also maintained that large portions of the planned route were not based on military need but rather designed to achieve the political aim of expanding the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
On April 2, 2009,
the court decided to freeze the proceedings in the petitions, with the parties’ consent, given that “the state does not intent to carry out construction of the security fence on the route subject of the petitions”.
On November 16, 2015, given the long freeze of proceedings, the court instructed the parties to submit within 14 days their position as to whether the petitions should be left pending.
On December 10, 2015,
the state submitted its response, announcing that the seizure order had been last extended on September 9, 2014, and was to expire on December 31, 2017. The state undertook to alert the petitioners 45 days in advance about any future intent to resume construction work in that specific section of the barrier.
The state consented to the petitions’ deletion, while reserving all its arguments and rights.
