A recent case in Quebec Superior Court sought to punish Canadian companies involved in construction of housing units in Bil’in, a village near Jerusalem that was part of Jordanian territory captured by Israel in 1967. The plaintiffs, the Village of Bil’in and the heirs of its former mayor, argued that the construction activity made the defendants complicit with the State of Israel and guilty of the commission of a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The leader lawyer for the plaintiffs in Israel was Emily Schaeffer, who is linked through her law form to Al Haq, a Swedish-funded NGO that seeks to use international courts as a forum to demonize and criminalize Israel.
In a ruling on September 18, 2009, Mr. Justice Louis-Paul Cullen dismissed the suit on the grounds that the plaintiffs had “selected a forum having little connection with the Action in order to inappropriately gain a judicial advantage” , and awarded partial costs to the Defendants.
Click here to read the decision in PDF format » (67 pages, 4.8 MB)
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