The legal watchdog group Yesh Din petitioned the High Court of Justice on Thursday against Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein’s decision not to prosecute officials who admitted to illegally constructing a sewage treatment plant for the West Bank settlement of Ofra.

Open gallery view Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein. Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

According to Weinstein, because the state has not brought criminal charges against illegal construction over the years in the West Bank, even the few individuals who have been investigated cannot be charged because that would be unfairly discriminating against them in relation to others who have not been charged.

In February 2012 the chairman of the Yesha Council of Settlements and then-deputy chairman of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, Avi Roeh, was interrogated under warning by the police southern district fraud squad on charges of constructing a sewage purification plant for the settlement of Ofra on private Palestinian land and issuing fraudulent permits to do so. Roeh admitted to the police that this was the case, but Weinstein declined to prosecute Roeh and then-regional council chairman Pinhas Wallerstein.

This ran contrary to Weinstein’s repeated public statements about the need to prosecute those responsible for illegal construction in the West Bank.

The facility in question was built in 2008, when threats of fines and prosecution over the channeling of sewage into a nearby wadi led Wallerstein and Roeh to build a waste treatment facility on lands belonging to the village of Silwad without obtaining the proper permits. The plant was funded by the state to the tune of millions of shekels. When the Civil Administration issued a stop-work order, the council issued a fictitious construction permit to the firm building the facility.

In 2008, the owners of the land and Yesh Din petitioned the High Court against the construction and the state pledged not to operate the facility until its legal status was put to rest. Yesh Din also brought a civil suit, still pending, and filed a police complaint in the matter.

Roeh told police during questioning that the permit he had signed was “not final” because he knew the land was privately owned.

Wallerstein, who is currently a consultant to the Ministry of the Development of the Negev and the Galilee, was also questioned under warning at the time, and admitted that he had initiated the project and that the council did not own the land.

However, according to a letter sent to Yesh Din by Weinstein’s aide, Adi Menahem, a month after the decision was made to close the case without bringing charges, “The establishment of the purification facility was intended to meet the needs of an important public this does not justify in any way illegal construction, but public need, financing by the state and the time that has elapsed since construction must be taken into account. In this case, this would be a precedent-setting indictment because until now there has hardly been criminal enforcement of planning and building offenses in Judea and Samaria.”

Menahem said the attorney general had decided “that it would be incorrect to begin criminal enforcement and serve a preliminary indictment in the case of construction for public needs.”

In its petition to the High Court, Yesh Din stated: “The attorney general has repeatedly granted complete immunity to the settlers’ leaders with regard to building offenses and the stealing of private Palestinian land,” and called the attorney general’s reasoning for closing the case “scandalous.”

In a similar case, the state asked the High Court not to prosecute a developer, Yoel Tzur, who built 14 buildings and prefabricated housing in the Ulpana neighborhood of the settlement of Beit-El, on private Palestinian land. Tzur admitted under questioning that he knew the land was privately owned. In that case as well, State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan decided to close the case because administrative enforcement had been implemented, and this obviated the need for criminal enforcement. Another hearing on this case is to be held next month.