Israel allows wildcat settlement expansion in occupied West Bank outpost

Israeli officials acknowledge that they have allowed wildcat settler units to be built at the illegal outpost of Homesh in the northern West Bank, after barring hundreds of activists from holding a demonstration against the plan.

The far-right cabinet responded to a petition filed by the so-called  high court of justice on Friday, saying that minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant had ordered the military to allow the illegal expansion at Homesh in late May.

The site in the northern West Bank has long hosted a makeshift yeshiva – an extremist educational institution, which was established on private Palestinian land.

As part of attempts to legalize the unlawful outpost, extremist settlers moved a caravan onto an adjacent hilltop and started operating the yeshiva from there instead.

The Israeli military initially moved to block the plan as it was being conducted without the necessary permits, but Gallant ordered the military to stand down.

The Yesh Din rights group that filed the petition sent attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara a letter, urging her to open a criminal probe against Gallant and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich. Baharav-Miara has so far held off on such a move.

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In its response to the high court petition, the Israeli cabinet alleged that though the transfer of the yeshiva may have been illegal, Palestinian farmers can now access their land where the old Homesh yeshiva used to be located.

This is not actually the case though, since an Israeli military checkpoint has been established outside the outpost and continues to prevent Palestinians from reaching their lands.

Yesh Din slammed the response, saying authorities violated their explicit commitment to the court not to seek to establish a permanent settlement at Homesh, which was evacuated along with several other northern West Bank communities as part of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

“The response amounts to the cabinet’s implementation of its policy of annexation and apartheid. As the political echelon cooperates with an act of criminality, the bureaucrats go out of their way to reward criminals and establish a permanent settlement on the lands of the [Palestinian] village of Burka while completely ignoring the property rights and security of the Palestinian landowners,” Yesh Din said.

Also on Friday, Israeli troops blocked several hundred activists from marching toward Homesh, violently dispersing the group. 

Participants in the demonstration, organized by Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement organization, arrived near the Shavei Shomron settlement and sought to walk several kilometers north to Homesh.

The group said it informed the Israeli military ahead of time of the planned demonstration. However, central command chief Yehuda Fox ruled on Friday that the demonstration would not be approved, citing what he termed as security concerns.

Roughly a kilometer into the march, participants were stopped by Israeli troops who handed them a military order signed by Fox, which stated that the area they were seeking to reach had been temporarily declared a closed military zone.

The marchers sought to go around the soldiers, walking through Palestinian olive groves.

In order to disperse them, soldiers hurled stun grenades. However, they sparked a fire in the fields, torching an acre’s-worth of crops.

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Peace Now said in a statement that the demonstrators were “held back by the army with severe violence, while the violent criminals from the Homesh outpost who looted private lands and carry out atrocities against Palestinians are allowed to roam freely and receive VIP treatment.”

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

While all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, Israel has stepped up settlement expansion in blatant violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East al-Quds as its capital.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued illegal settlement expansion.

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