Israeli parliament moves bill forward to legalize unlawful outposts

Israel’s parliament (Knesset) has given its initial approval to a controversial bill that would authorize the presence of illegal settlement units built on privately-owned Palestinian territories in the occupied West Bank amid outcry that the measure would amount to land grab.

The legislature advanced the so-called Regulation Bill by 60 votes to 49 during a late Monday session. It will be put to a second vote on Tuesday, with three readings needed at unspecified future dates before it becomes law.

The bill is a revised version of legislation that, in its original form, defied the Israeli supreme court’s decision on the evacuation of the illegal Amona settlement outpost, which is located northeast of Ramallah in the central West Bank and constructed on private Palestinian land.

The supreme court decision stipulated that the evacuation of Amona “must occur before December 25.”

The new bill has scrapped the so-called Amona clause. The 330 residents of the unlawful settlement outpost are then to be moved to a nearby hill for eight months, after which they would be forced to move a second time.

Hard-line Israeli politician Naftali Bennett has praised the parliamentary approval of the bill to retroactively authorize illegal outposts as a step away from establishing a Palestinian state.

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog has, however, lamented the legislation and warned that the Israeli regime is committing “suicide” with the measure.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has also called the bill “really concerning.”

“There will be no advance and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace,” he said.

Additionally, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov said, “Some have pronounced (this bill) to be a step towards the annexation of the West Bank (that could have) far-reaching legal consequences for Israel and across the occupied West Bank, and greatly diminish the prospect of Arab-Israeli peace.”

More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

The Palestinian Authority wants the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinians state, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

However, the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle to that goal.

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