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Page added on February 7, 2017
Israeli settlement law ‘violates rights and dignity’
Palestinian politicians and human rights groups are warning that a new law passed by the Israeli parliament violates international laws and is a step towards Israel annexing the occupied West Bank.
The so-called Regulation Law, passed on Monday night, allows for the retroactive legalisation of about 4,000 homes built by Jewish settlers on privately owned Palestinian land.
“The law sets a new legal framework that implements the Israeli political interest and puts it above international humanitarian law,” Suhad Bishara, a lawyer at the Adalah legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, told Al Jazeera.
The law violates both the right to property and the right to dignity, Bishara said.
“The most obvious case here is that it violates property rights, because it basically confiscates private property for the sake of the illegal settlers,” she said. “But we cannot avoid the aspect of dignity here, and humiliation, and no value at all for the rights of the Palestinian owners of the land.”
READ MORE: Israel’s settlement bill ‘big step towards annexation’
Before the bill was passed, Israel’s attorney general said that it was unconstitutional and that he would not be able to defend it. Along with other rights groups, Adalah is set to file a petition against the law to Israel’s Supreme Court later this week, as well as asking for a temporary order not to implement the law until Israel’s highest court gives a final decision.
According to the Israeli rights group Peace Now, the law will allow for the expropriation of land in more than 50 settlements and outposts. There are 16 cases where demolition orders have already been issued by Israeli authorities, including land in the settlements of Ofra, Eli and Beit El, among others. As a result of the new law, the settlers in these illegal outposts would be allowed to remain in their homes.
Palestinian lawmakers in the Knesset denounced the law, calling it a direct challenge to the international community in the wake of December’s United Nations Security Council resolution that called for an end to settlement building.
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“From the political point of view and from the legal point of view, this law should not have been legislated. This is a law that is meant to implement the creeping annexation of Palestinian occupied lands to Israel,” Aida Touma-Suleiman, an MK with the Arab Joint List, told Al Jazeera.
“This is a law that is challenging the international community. It’s arrogant behaviour by this government, who are not willing to pay attention to what the international community is [saying]. It is about time to hold them responsible for the decisions and laws they are legislating.”
Gilad Grossman, a spokesperson for the Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din, said that the law has stripped Palestinian landowners of any chance to reclaim their land.
“What it means is that Palestinian landowners can’t get their land back, whether they want to or not,” he said.
As a result of the new law, Palestinian landowners only have the option of financial compensation, Grossman added – “to go through the system of the people who stole your land and to ask for them to give you some money, as much as they decide to give you, on the conditions they decide with the proof they demand”.
The ownership of the land itself will remain in the hands of the Palestinian landowners, although they will not be able to access or use it.
“It’s a very cynical law,” Grossman noted. “It basically means that they own the land and can get it back in the future, if there will be some kind of political agreement and decision regarding the West Bank. It was stolen and now it’s being leased against their will basically, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
On Tuesday morning, Israel’s high court ruled that 17 buildings in the illegal outpost of Tapuach Maarav would have to be demolished by 2018. It is not clear how the new law will affect that ruling.
8 Comments on "Israeli settlement law ‘violates rights and dignity’"
Davy on Tue, 7th Feb 2017 7:14 am
This place is losing relevance as the rest of the world sinks into turmoil. Greater Palestine/Israel represents a small amount of land with a population of a large city. Yet, the world in its infinite stupidity dwells on this place in magnified concern as if they were a continent. Let’s get our priorities straight now that the whole world is going into the shitter.
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Feb 2017 8:04 am
Multi-ethnic societies are a failure, everywhere: Palestine, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, USSR, the list goes on and on.
Yet there are those sadistic nihilists among us who keep claiming that this is the model for the future and that it is “inevitable”.
Inevitable my foot.
Sissyfuss on Tue, 7th Feb 2017 10:29 am
When you invite every Jew in the world to come live in the motherland it gets very crowded and creates a need to expand ones territory. What are the Jews views on contraception? Like most religions, I’m sure they are quite archaic.
DerHundistlos on Tue, 7th Feb 2017 1:29 pm
@ fussy
The Jewish religious zealots are big time breeders. The rabbis openly encourage very large families as a means of increasing political influence, and the strategy is working as evidenced by this article.
How is it that the Jews receive no international condemnation for forcibly evicting Palestinian families from their homes and farms, without compensation, for no other reason than Israel wants the land. It matters not how many generations the land has been owned. The Palestinians are forcibly evicted if need be. Once gone, the Palestinians are transported to either the Gaza Strip or West Bank concentration camp. Can you imagine the consequences if this occurred in any other country?
penury on Tue, 7th Feb 2017 4:02 pm
That which cannot be named is used as the reason by the liberals of the world. Agree? Disagree? No one asked your opinion and no one wants it.
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Feb 2017 4:53 pm
End nineties these… em… neocons sat around the table, scheming and plotting how they could redesign the Middle East, all at the benefit of Israel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZIhijE0ZqM
Than out of the blue, 9/11 happened and conveniently delivered the pretext for the invasion at their door step, free of charge (if you want to believe that story).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgrunnLcG9Q
A few years later, when it was clear that the Iraq safari had been a disaster, for everybody involved, except for Iran, Wesley Clark spilled the beans about the policy Washington had been agreed upon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw
16 years later the world of Islam is in turmoil. Turkey is moving away from EU membership (thank God), there have been several revolutions, Iraq/Libya/Syria are devastated, we have seen massive terror attacks. And Israel is in the middle of it all. The “holy land” was part of the Ottoman empire for centuries. When Erdogan holds speeches in Turkey he openly talks about recapturing Jerusalem (and Spain, but I digress). It could happen one day.
Dooma on Tue, 7th Feb 2017 9:27 pm
The West Bank, the Federal Reserve bank. Not bad for a bunch of paracites.
joe on Wed, 8th Feb 2017 12:26 am
Let’s be honest it’s not that hard to keep Zionism going. America solicits the support of Saudi Arabia in this project too. It’s really rather simple. Keep Shia fighting Sunni, direct Jihadi propaganda and funds at groups fighting Christians and the West. Flood the West with useless migrants. Keep the middle east generally poor and constantly back dictatorship over democracy and minority rule over majority rule. Funny, America is officially a minority ruled country and is in political chaos, strange goings on eh… Good old UK is leaving the doomed EU cause why, the EU backs Palestine over Zionism, strange eh….