Alwaght- The Israeli law making body (Knesset) initially approves a bill that will legalize confiscation of privately owned Palestinian lands for illegal settlements on Tuesday.
The bill known as Regulation Bill was approved by 60 positive votes against 49 opposing votes during the Knesset session on Monday.
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.
The bill has also angered Israel’s most loyal friends in Washington as the US foreign minister, John Kerry 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 al-Quds (Jerusalem).
