Israel Panel Backs Legalizing West Bank Outposts

By AMY TEIBEL
Associated Press
JERUSALEM
A government-commissioned report released Monday has recommended that Israel legalize dozens of unsanctioned West Bank settlement outposts, a move that would defy international opposition to settling land Palestinians want for a future state.

The report, written by a committee with pro-settler sympathies, also reaffirmed Israel’s longstanding position, at odds with most of the world, that the West Bank is not occupied territory and therefore Israel has the legal right to settle it.

If endorsed by the government, the recommendations could give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ammunition to support new settlement activity and fend off pressure from a Supreme Court that has ordered the government to take action against the existing outposts.

Netanyahu welcomed the panel’s work and said he would bring its conclusions to a special forum that would decide whether to adopt them. Recommendations include annulling past Supreme Court rulings and legal orders to facilitate settlement construction.

Jewish settlements are at the heart of a three-year-old impasse in Mideast peace efforts. The Palestinians say they will not resume negotiations until Israel freezes settlement construction.

The outposts are unsanctioned enclaves that Jewish settlers began erecting in the 1990s to sidestep Israel’s commitment to stop building new settlements. There are dozens of outposts, in addition to about 120 full-fledged settlements.

Of Israel’s population of almost 8 million, about 500,000 now live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas claimed by the Palestinians for a future state. The Palestinians and the international community consider the settlements illegitimate and obstacles to peace.

Palestinian spokesman Ghassan Khatib immediately denounced the report’s conclusions.

Netanyahu set up the committee in January to examine land use issues in the West Bank after concluding that a 2005 report on unauthorized settlement outposts was tainted by leftist bias. The author of the report, which had been commissioned by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a staunch settlement champion, was a former state prosecutor who ran for parliament on the dovish Meretz Party’s ticket after leaving the civil service.

The new committee was headed by former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, who opposed Israel’s 2005 Gaza Strip withdrawal. It was considered sympathetic to setters and was expected to issue the recommendation to legalize outposts.

Although they skirted official approval procedures, government officials knew the outposts were being built and supplied them with the infrastructure hookups and military protection given to sanctioned settlements. About 100 outposts, home to several thousand Israelis, dot the West Bank, in addition to more than 120 full-fledged settlements.

The Israeli government had promised the U.S. in 2003 to tear down two dozen outposts built a decade ago but it has never honored that commitment.

The 2005 report on outposts by Talia Sasson was sharply critical of government complicity in their construction and noted that dozens were built on Palestinian-owned land, in violation of Israeli law. Israel’s Supreme Court recently rebuffed the Netanyahu government’s efforts to preserve one of the outposts, and it is due to be demolished next month. A second outpost was evacuated this month in spite of Netanyahu’s efforts to avert the settlers’ eviction.

The report made public on Monday proposed that procedures be streamlined to legalize the outposts and allow for new settlement construction. Committee member Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who is now a fellow at a conservative think-tank, said the outposts were not authorized because of international pressure and urged their approval.

The committee has also proposed that Israelis and Palestinians be given no more than five years to register land they say they own. After that time, no one will be able to claim ownership, a situation that could disadvantage Palestinians unaware of their legal rights, especially those who live outside the West Bank.

The panel also recommends annulling a Supreme Court decision from 1979 forbidding the expropriation of land for “military needs” when the intent is to build settlements. And it calls for the cancellation of an order that lets the military force settlers off land that appears to be Palestinian, even if no Palestinian has proven full ownership.

The committee endorsed Israel’s position that the West Bank is not occupied territory and therefore can be settled. Because the area is not sovereign territory, “the actual act of settling the West Bank is not illegal,” Baker said.

Israel captured the West Bank, now home to some 2.5 million Palestinians, from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. It argues that there is no sovereign power there because Jordan’s 1948 annexation of the West Bank was not internationally recognized, and the Hashemite kingdom renounced all claims to the territory in 1988. Israel never annexed the territory.

The Palestinians and most of the international community argue that the West Bank was under Jordanian control at the time of its capture and is not Israeli territory, meaning it is occupied territory.

International bodies have bolstered that view.

The World Court ruled in 2004 that all Israeli settlements are illegal because they were built on occupied land. And U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967, calls for the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”