FOLLOWING a violent confrontation in the West Bank on February 2nd between Jewish settlers and police, who were carrying out a High Court order to evict an unauthorised mini-settlement at Amona, the Israeli Knesset voted on February 6th to pass a euphemistically named “regulation law”. This will allow the Israeli government in future retroactively to expropriate privately owned Palestinian land on which Israeli settlements have been built. It will not help the 40 Israeli families forced to leave their homes in Amona last week, but it could alter the status of as many as 4,000 housing units built on private Palestinian land in the West Bank. This is the first time since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 that Israel has acted to extend Israeli law to the occupied West Bank. The bill legalises building on private land only in some circumstances, and at least provides for compensation for the owners, either in cash or alternative land.
The prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, had previously opposed such a law. His government’s attorney-general has refused either to endorse it or to defend it if it is challenged in Israel’s High Court, as it is...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2jZ9iPB
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