Pick and mix in the court room

Is it me or is it extraordinary that Israel is so obedient to the laws of long-gone empires?

Every day her government flouts international law – Palestinians are imprisoned in Israel, their houses demolished, orchards ripped up and their lands and water taken for illegal settlements – all contraventions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Yet the laws of the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire and even those of neighbouring Jordan which used to administer this tiny enclave are respected.

"I sold 43 goats and sheep and my wife sold her gold and jewellery," said Abu Azzam, head of the Land Defence Committee in Jayyous.

"I bought a big bulldozer and cleared the rocks. I was very proud that I saved my land."

He's talking about a plot Israel threatened to confiscate under an old British Mandate law which classified any land which was 50 per cent or more rock as not suitable for agriculture.

The first law he was wise enough to comply with was the Absentee Landlord legislation, used with such devastating effect following the Naqba (catastrophe) in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians fled in the wake of founding of the state of Israel on their lands.

If you were "absent" when Israel was established on 78 per cent of mandated Palestine you weren't allowed back and your property was forfeit. The controversy still rages with Jews from all over the world allowed to migrate to Israel but those who still have the keys of their houses denied the Right of Return.

Remembering this, Abu Azzam and his bride returned to Jayyous on foot from their honeymoon in Jordan following the 1967 invasion, lest they lost their property.

He shows us more land in danger of "confiscation', this time under Ottoman law. If the land isn't cultivated for three years it reverts to the state – in this case Israel, though according to international law the State of Israel has no business here.

I visit Izbat at Tabib, a tiny village of 300 souls. The mayor shows us the brand-new community centre which contains the school and which will house a clinic – if it's not bull-dozed.

Together with half the houses and the concrete arch welcoming you to the village, it has been issued with a demolition order. The reasoning is that the land was once designated agricultural land by the Jordanians who adminstered the West Bank before the 1967 invasion.

Strangely enough, the rule doesn't seem to apply to the Israeli settlement above Tabib – it's spreading rapidly downhill.

Wi'am Shabita is an Israeli advocate who specialises in political and land cases in the Israeli Supreme Court. He tells me that the Israeli government used the experience of the partition of India to formulate the Absentee Landlord law, enacted in 1953 and applied retrospectively from the inception of the Jewish State.

"All those that could prove they were on their land that day kept it," he said.

The Ottoman Law of 1860, amended in 1900, is used to take uncultivated land and the British Mandate which operated from 1922 till 1948 followed the Turkish lead.

"The British didn't change the law," he added.

He tells me of a case of a woman from nearby Deir Istya who went to the United States and nearly lost her land under the Absentee Landlord law.

"The Israelis call themselves 'guardians of the property'," he said.

When she proved she had been back within the time limit, the Israeli authorities tried to confiscate it under the non-cultivation rule.

Aerial photos are taken twice a year, hopefully not before planting or after harvest when there will be no standing crops. This woman's case is not yet resolved. "Until now they couldn't offer aerial photos," said Wi'am.

The State of Israel denies legitimacy to UN Resolutions, the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Court of Justice's ruling on the Separation Barrier. How quaint that she should be so scrupulous about all these other statutes.