The head of the Land and Water Settlement Authority, Muhammad Sharaka, the Acting Governor of Bethlehem, Muhammad Taha, and the Mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Hanania, opened the new Bethlehem Settlement Court on Wednesday.
Sharakah said that according to the judicial composition, the Bethlehem Settlement Court has two judges, and there are efforts to increase the number by one judge in order to shorten the legal period and speed up the decision on cases, indicating that there are between 6,000-7,000 objection cases in the Bethlehem Settlement Court.
He pointed out that the Settlement Commission has 100 settlement offices in all governorates of the West Bank, and 14 settlement courts with 18 judges, while the total number of employees is 1,200, and there is a request to increase the staff and employ 700 employees in order to shorten the time in the settlement process.
Sharakah revealed that there are 38,000 objections in the settlement courts in the West Bank, and despite this number, cases with a total of one million six hundred dunums have been completed after 2016, meaning that there are 95% who received "Koshan", explaining that when the settlement process was launched in the year 2006 until the year 2016 59 thousand dunums have been accomplished, but after its administrative and financial independence in 2016, the biggest achievement took place.
In turn, Taha stressed the importance of the Settlement Court in resolving pending cases, which took years to no avail, hoping that the settlement would not be part of the problem.
As for Hanania, he said that the Bethlehem governorate suffers from thorny files related to land and real estate, for reasons including that part of the citizens are abroad and the other part does not have clear documents, and there are deep disputes that originate over ownership.
He added that the opening of the court is a positive step that will solve many issues, while stressing that thorny security issues are directly related to land and real estate.
Source: Maan News Agency
