Palestinian in Kafkaesque battle over family's hotel

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ABU DIS, West Bank — 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.

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-palestinian-hotel-lawsuit-20130909,0,1873058.story

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1. Just an addendum

The notice puzzled the family because the hotel had been confiscated in 2003 under the 1950 Absentee Property law, which was originally used to seize property owned by Palestinian refugees who fled their homes during the 1948 war after Israel's creation.

It goes a bit further than that. The Absentee Property law was not only used to seize land from Palestinians who were expelled, it was also used to seize land from Palestinians that were still within Israel (Arab Israelis).

In so doing, Israel created a novel legal oxymoron: the "present absentee" - a person who is present, but is to be treated as though he were absent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_absentees

Present absentees are not permitted to live in the homes they were expelled from, even if they live in the same area, the property still exists, and they can show that they own it. They are regarded as absent by the Israeli government because they left their homes, even if they did not intend to leave them for more than a few days, and even if they did so involuntarily.

A famous example is Kafr Bi'rim. The Maronite population there was evacuated by the IDF, then the land was confiscated. Menachem Begin promised the residents that they would be allowed to return, but changed his mind once elected:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafr_Bir%27im

This is the quandary for Israel. Most of the entire country was stolen from Arabs pursuant to these laws. The Supreme Court of Israel can't challenge one act of theft without challenging them all.

Even today, Arab Israelis will very rarely leave their houses unoccupied for any length of time, for fear that the state will confiscate them. Even during the 2006 July war with Hezbollah, most Arabs in the north refused to leave for this very reason.

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2. The difference between theoretical justification and actual purpose exposed once again.

The basic idea being to exclude non-Jews in order to bolster up the "Jewish State", which is rational enough in it's way.

It's almost American or Australian, that attitude, nervousness about the legitimacy of ones territorial claims.

One reason we are shitty to our native americans is because the government fears the lawsuits that WILL COME once the means and access are provided. I am sure the same considerations of guilt and fear apply in many places on the planet, few are the peoples who reside on land not taken from someone else.

I have thought since I became acquainted with this dispute that that is all sorts of a mistake, the more bodies is better approach, they should have stuck with quality is better, which got them through 2000 years while many better situated are gone and forgotten, and in a world already overpopulated, you need to worry about population stability a lot more than "growth".