Canberra Embassy response

In Australia, two men are fighting over the rights to a shared driveway. They go to the courts, the judge makes a decision, and the decision is respected and abided by.

In Israel, two residents are fighting over the rights to a house in Jerusalem. One party presents his case to a foreign journalist, the journalist does not qualify the facts of the case, the journalist determines that this party owns the house and publishes it on the front page of The Weekend Australian Magazine (August 22-23).

This second scenario is the story of Nasser Jaber and his current court action in an Israeli court.

Mr Jaber is currently before the court arguing that a house in the Old City in Jerusalem, currently occupied by Jewish residents, is legally, his.

The Jewish residents are also before the courts, arguing the house legitimately belongs to them.

Mr Jasser may own the house, he may not. The point is that the court, presented with all the evidence, has not yet made a determination on this case. So what, we ask, gives the foreign media the right or ability to make a determination before they do?

The embassy does not take issue with a court case being reported, but it does take issue with the fact that Mr Jaber’s single narrative was not qualified, nor were the relevant authorities given a right of reply to his allegations.

We took two weeks to forward this response [to news organisations] because we, responsibly, determined the adequacies of the allegations presented.

The embassy spoke with [representatives of] the Israeli Supreme Court, the Israeli police and the Jerusalem municipality.

It was made evident from their responses that Mr Jaber’s story is not as straightforward as he would like to make out.

The Israeli court - a court world-renowned for being a vigorous defender of human rights - is currently reviewing this case.

At the most recent court appearance, the judge stated that the balance of evidence currently before the court fell in the Jewish residents’ favour. Therefore, the decision was made to allow them to remain in the house until a final judgement was made.

The implication that the article makes - that the Jewish residents are expected to live without connecting the water or electricity - is plain absurd.

Additionally, the Jewish residents’ lawyer was never granted a private meeting with the judge [as asserted in The Weekend Australian’s article].

This would have been a clear violation of judicial propriety, and this would not even have been contemplated, let alone allowed under the stringent regulations of the Israeli court system.

Accusations levelled at the police are similarly untrue. The police never

cooperated with the Jewish residents and never supplied them with food. It may have been that the Jewish residents employed a private security firm - a legitimate act - which may have performed these actions. But, we are presenting this as a possibility, not a fact We would not present stories without the facts.

However, this article is far more damaging than merely only telling one side of the story.

This article takes a private property dispute and makes it an issue about Israeli state policy.

How it can be that Jewish residents exercising their legal right to determine a private property matter before the courts are upheld as policy makers for the entire country?

The residents are referred to as “settlers”, even though their political ideology was never questioned.

In the article, there is no distinction made between those who are politically and religiously motivated to build in areas of disputed territory - of which Jerusalem is not - and those who legitimately want to exercise their property rights and enter the housing market.

It is without question that the Jewish residents at issue in this article fall into either category, but we don’t have the luxury of assumption or the ability to make such a judgement.

This is not a political issue. It is a question of legal feet. By using such terminology, you [the journalist] are confusing the distinction between the two.

The Nasser Jaber article does a disservice to those who are currently trying to negotiate the complex path to the resumption of peace negotiations.

In publishing this story, The Weekend Australian damages the ability of parties to the peace process to negotiate with trust and creditability.

To the readers of the Jaber article, the answer is simple: Israel should expect peace, but it will not happen if articles like this continue to be published.