West Bank: Israel overturns settlement clearance law

Israel’s parliament has repealed a 2005 law allowing Israeli settlers to return to four West Bank areas. Members of the governing coalition are cheering, critics are up in arms.

Settlers dance and sing euphorically after a parliamentary decision that can be called historic. In the early hours of the morning, the majority of the right-wing religious coalition government repealed the so-called decoupling law of 2005. At that time, Israel withdrew from four settlements in the northern West Bank. After today’s parliamentary decision, that’s a waste of time.

The influential Likud politician Juli Juwel, who pushed the law massively, sees this as just a beginning. “Not only will it help us with the settlement project, but it will also help us in our fight against terror and in the development of the country of Eretz Israel.”

The politician Limor Son Har Melech from the right-wing ruling party Jewish Strength called for the four settlements between the Palestinian cities of Nablus and Jenin to be resettled immediately.

One should not rest on one’s laurels and the euphoria of the moment, she explained: “The region in northern Samaria also needs a government settlement project that forms a strategic settlement line and thus guarantees Jewish control in this strip of land.” Northern Samaria – nothing other than the north of the West Bank, which actually belongs to the Palestinians under international law.

But the new right-wing religious government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken up the cause of expanding settlement construction and legalizing previously illegal settlements. With today’s law, the first pegs are being driven in.

Sharp criticism from Peace Now and the opposition

Criticism comes from the opposition and from various non-governmental organizations. Peace Now, a left-leaning NGO, accused the government of envisioning a Greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the Tigris. It is clear that a “messianic coup” is now taking place, which will lead to a “deepening of the occupation and set the area on fire”.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid called on Defense Minister Joav Galant to stop the “madness”. Under this government, national security threatens to collapse.

government unimpressed

But the government is anything but impressed. But on the contrary. In a speech in France, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich even denied the existence of the Palestinians. “I would like to ask you what language the Palestinians speak? Was there a Palestinian coin at some point in history? Is there a Palestinian history or a Palestinian culture? There is none. There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”

According to participants, on the Israeli minister’s lectern was a map of Israel that included the occupied West Bank and even parts of Jordan. The Jordanian foreign ministry immediately summoned the Israeli ambassador to Amman, and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described Smotrich’s statements as unacceptable. They are wrong, disrespectful, dangerous and counterproductive in an already tense situation.