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Historic pro-settlement Israeli legislation (if taken seriously)

[additional-authors]
December 6, 2016

There are two ways to understand the controversial bill that the Israeli legislature, the Knesset, passed yesterday in a preliminary vote: the first one is to dismiss it as yet another show of political bravado; the second one is to treat it as a turning point in Israel’s history. And, of course, this is the black and white portrait, to which one can add many shades of gray.

Let me explain: the ” target=”_blank”>Regulation Bill, as they call it) aims to allow Israel to seize land from its legal Palestinian owners and compensate these owners when homes of settlers were mistakenly built on this land. The rationale behind the legislation is as follows: Palestinians cannot sell land to Israelis in the West Bank because of a death penalty that the Palestinian authorities apply to sellers. Land in the West Bank doesn’t always come with orderly paperwork, and in some cases an owner is found only years after a settlement was built on the land. The idea of the law, then, is simple: compensate the owner (he cannot sell out of his or her own free will), and avoid the evacuation of people who have been living on the land for many years.

It is, of course, problematic legislation because of two issues:

The first one – because it takes land away from its legal owners. True, a state can confiscate land when it is needed for a road or another public necessity, but it does not confiscate land from one owner to let another owner live on the land.

The second one – the West Bank is not legally a part of Israel and hence the rules of the country do not fully apply to it. In this case, the occupying force is taking away private land from people who have no political leverage and no citizen rights, and hence no reasonable path to resist the decision.

It is bad legislation, morally, legally, and politically. That is why the Attorney General, the legal advisor to the Knesset and the Prime Minister, oppose it. There is a fairly good chance that if it ultimately passes the supreme court would reject it.

So, should it be taken seriously?

Let’s begin with the yes. If it is taken seriously, what the Israeli Knesset did yesterday is to declare, for the first time, that it views the West Bank as a part of Israel – namely, without saying it, the Knesset was moving toward annexation. The head of the Jewish Home Party did make it clear: “This is a historic day in the Knesset, which went from establishing a Palestinian state to Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. Have no doubt: The settlement bill is leading the way to annexation.” Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog played along: “This is another dispute that will be remembered in the history of the state. This is a bill for the creation of a bi-national state.” Both the leaders of the right and the left wanted to make this preliminary passing of a bill seem like a day for the history books.

If this is the first step in Israel’s long road to annexation – then the bill indeed should be taken seriously. For good or bad – whether one wants annexation or opposes it (my personal view

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