2022-04-26

West Bank

West Bank / Announcement / Core Program / position paper

A Decision Obstructing Justice and Costly to the Treasury must be Rescinded

The High Judicial Council announced in a statement posted on its website and Facebook page, on 20.4.2022, the movement of the headquarters of the Hebron Appeal Court from the Dura Magistrate Court building to the former Hebron Court of First Instance building, located in Hebron, Al-Mazrouq neighborhood, as of Monday morning, corresponding to 25.04.2022.

The Judicial Administration had previously held, only 25 days before its aforementioned announcement, an inaugural ceremony for the new Hebron Courts and Prosecution complex, which was built with the support of the Canadian Representative office and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), to serve 359,000 citizens of Hebron and its surrounding areas, on a total area of ​​about 16,050 square meter, that is supposed to be allocated to all the courts of territorial jurisdiction in the city of Hebron and the surrounding areas, including the Magistrate’s Court, the Court of First Instance, the Appeal Court, the Notary Public Department, the Execution Department, the Notifications Department, the Partial Prosecution Office in Hebron and members of the judicial police, in order to provide a decent appearance of justice in its capacity as an essential pillar of Justice’s foundations, facilitate litigation procedures, save financial burdens on the public treasury, and solve the problem of the continuous daily movement of lawyers between the various judicial bodies in a way that ensures their representation of their clients in all cases entrusted to them, enhances the culture of cooperation between the standing judiciary and the sitting judiciary, and prevents the rights of their clients from being harmed due to their lateness -as a result of that continuous movement- for appearing before various judicial bodies, especially that the police have their own headquarters, with the exception of members of the judicial police whose job demands require their presence in court.

The movement of the court’s headquarters from its new headquarters, which are supposed to host  and accommodate it and that is prepared for it to sit and work, to the old headquarters indicates a waste of public money and an overburden of work for lawyers, and a distracting and time-consuming condition, especially that the old building was marked by the lack of any of the elements of judicial work in it, and that was a fundamental reason for the construction of the new building, and it is illogical that the treasury continues to charge the rent of an entire building (the old building) at the time when the opening of the new court complex was celebrated.

It is imagined that the crisis that led to the construction of the new building does not only continue but also deepens in terms of keeping the lawyer in a state of physical mobility and mental distraction and endangering the rights of his/her clients, such as writing off cases, trial in absentia, or postponing litigation procedures for a long period due to his/her inability to appear before a judicial body located in the new complex because s/he had to appear before the Court of Appeal in the old building.

In addition to what the decision to allocate the old building to the Court of Appeal causes in terms of deepening the judicial backlog crisis because of the above-mentioned effects. Not to mention its negative economic, financial, and human effects on the one hand, and its acknowledgment of the failure of the new building's ability to adopt it as a model for court complex buildings in other cities, and this contradicts the statements of representatives of the judicial administration at its opening ceremony.

We believe that there is no need nor necessity to continue renting the old building due to the shortcomings and loopholes referred to in this statement, which makes the decision of the judicial administration subject to immediate rescindment.

With respect,

Issued on 26.04.2022

Musawa