Middle East Monitor / August 3, 2023
The appeal against the illegal West Bank Jewish outpost of Homesh, urging its evacuation to allow Palestinian landowners access to their land, was dismissed by Israel’s High Court of Justice.
According to Haaretz, in her verdict High Court Justice Yael Wilner claimed that the outpost’s buildings were relocated from privately-owned Palestinian land and therefore negates the claim of illegal construction.
Despite the access road leading to the outpost and occupation forces remaining on Palestinian-owned land, Wilner claimed these factors are not central to the appeal.
It comes after the occupying government announced its intention to accelerate the approval process for settlement construction in June, in addition to giving Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich even more authority to approve expansions of illegal settlements.
Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, acting on behalf of the Palestinian landowners, criticized the decision to annul the appeal, stating that the move legitimizes the creation of a new Homesh settlement and serves as evidence of “apartheid rule” in the West Bank.
It said in a statement: “While throughout Israel people are fighting to protect the High Court as a symbol of democracy, today the justices proved that for the Palestinians in the West Bank, there is no defender and no law, and in the occupied territories might is right.”
It added: “This shameful decision by the High Court justices is further evidence of the apartheid rule that has been established in the territories and which has become the norm, with the approval of the High Court of Justice.”
Israeli settlements often begin life as illegal outposts. It is a colonial strategy practiced by every settler colonial state in their takeover of land and territory belonging to the indigenous population. In the case of Homesh, the illegal outpost was established in 1978 on confiscated land belonging to Palestinian residents of the nearby village of Burqa. It’s one of the countless ways in which Israel has created facts on the ground and rubber-stamped its immoral and illegal settler-colonialism.
Homesh was evacuated along with three other West Bank settlements in 2005.
The Disengagement Law prohibits Israelis from entering Homesh without special permission. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have agreed to amend the 2005 Disengagement Law which led to its evacuation, thus legalizing the Homesh outpost.
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Israel’s [famous] Supreme Court dismisses petition to remove West Bank Jewish settlement
Henriette Chacar
Reuters / August 3, 2023
JERUSALEM – Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against a petition to remove a previously abandoned Jewish settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank that Israeli parliament cleared for rebuilding earlier this year.
The court said on Wednesday that the recent relocation of the outpost, which mainly consists of a yeshiva or religious school, from private Palestinian land to public land was enough to allow Palestinians access to their land.
Palestinians say that despite its relocation, the settlement and the military forces securing it block them from freely reaching their land. They have reported increased Jewish settler violence in recent months that has put their lives and property at risk.
Most countries deem Jewish settlements built on land Israel occupied in a 1967 Middle East war as illegal. Their expansion has for decades been among the most contentious issues between Israel, the international community, and the Palestinians, who say settlements cut communities from each other and undermine hopes of a viable independent state.
The United States, Israel’s key ally, has repeatedly expressed objection to settlement expansion.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition, which includes far-right ministers who oppose Palestinian statehood, has accelerated settlement growth, citing biblical and historical ties to the area.
In March, Israel’s parliament amended a 2005 law to allow Jewish Israelis to return to four evacuated settlements, including Homesh in the northern West Bank, which overlooks the Palestinian village of Burqa.
Palestinian residents and lawyers with the Israeli rights group Yesh Din said the move emboldened Homesh settlers, who had returned to the area already in 2009 without authorization.
The outpost was recently moved to what Israel has marked as public land. It now appears on a map like a settlement island surrounded by private Palestinian territory.
“This settlement is a nightmare for the residents of Burqa,” said Nasser Hijja, a village council member. The government’s goal, he continued, is to take over all Palestinian areas.
“It does not want any Palestinian presence on this land,” said Hijja.
Two former heads of the Israeli military’s Central Command, which oversees West Bank operations, filed testimonies with the court opposing the re-settlement of Homesh. They warned it would expose Israel to security challenges and violate the rights of Palestinians to property and to free movement.
But the Supreme Court denied the petition, citing the change to the 2005 law. “There has been a fundamental change of circumstances in the factual basis underlying the petition,” wrote Justice Yael Vilner.
Yesh Din Director Ziv Stahl said the court was “helping Israel cement the occupation”.
“The court is giving the government exactly what it wants, which is to finalize the annexation of the West Bank,” she said.
Since January, Israel has advanced 12,855 Jewish settler housing units across the West Bank, said the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now – the highest number the group has recorded since it started tracking such activity in 2012.
Settler leader Yossi Dagan said Wednesday’s ruling was “an unparalleled moral step towards the correction of history”.
Reporting by Henriette Chacar; editing by Giles Elgood
