Updates

Israeli Hebrew daily Haaretz reports that today Israel's High Court of Justice will hear the petition filed by Palestinians from Bethlehem and the village of Nahleh. The petition is against Israel's decision to declare as "state land" about 1,000 dunams (100 hectares) southwest of Bethlehem in order to build a new neighborhood in the settlement of Efrat. The takeover of this land would block any possibility of development in Bethlehem or the villages south of the city, which are home to tens of thousands and are already surrounded by settlements. To learn more about what declaration of state land means and how Israel uses it to take over Palestinian land, click here.

Israel has reportedly decided to advance construction in the E-1 area of Ma'ale Adumim, connecting the settlement to Jerusalem. Such a move would have severe implications for human rights in the West Bank, cutting the West Bank in two, exacerbating the isolation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and posing a particular threat to Bedouin communities living in the area.

Between October 7th and 10th, 2012, with the start of the West Bank's annual olive harvest, B'Tselem has documented five cases of injury to Palestinian farmers and their olive trees in the Ramallah and Nablus regions. In two incidents, settlers attacked farmers picking olives and damaged their yields. The accumulation of incidents since the start of the olive harvest suggests that security forces were not adequately deployed to fulfill their duty to protect Palestinian olive harvesters and their property from settler violence.

On 9 July 2012, the media published the recommendations of a government-appointed committee on "steps to be taken to regularize construction" in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Given that the Levy Committee was founded explicitly to find ways of legalizing illegal acts, it is not surprising that its conclusions appear tailored to the settlement agenda. The report's conclusions have no basis in international law and almost completely ignore the people most hurt by the establishment of settlements, the two and a half million Palestinians of the West Bank.

On Wednesday, 20 June 2012, the Israeli government’s Ministerial Committee on Settlement Affairs approved an agreement to evacuate five buildings in Ulpana Hill, a neighborhood of the Beit El settlement. Following the approval, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the significance of the agreement is in “safeguarding the law.” The precise law to which the Prime Minister is referring, however, is unclear, and the agreement that was signed is not legal -- neither in light of High Court rulings nor under international law.

The Committee to Examine the State of Construction in the West Bank, Chaired by Supreme Court Justice (Ret.) Edmund Levy, is expected to announce its position in the near future. In anticipation of this, Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has called on the committee to not cooperate with the government's intention to legalize settlement building on West Bank land.

On 29 March 2012 dozens of settlers took over a building’s third floor in the Old City of Hebron. On 2 April 2012 the army issued an evacuation order instructing the settlers to leave by the following morning. On 4 April 2012 the security services evacuated the new settlement and sealed the entrances. Since then, the army has placed a guard on the building. The settlement points in Hebron were created in violation of international law and seriously interfere with the human rights of the Palestinian residents. Hence, Israel is legally and morally obliged to evacuate the Hebron settlers and return them to its own territory.

The natural resources of an occupied territory must be used to benefit local residents, unless they are needed for urgent military purposes. Yet on 26 Dec. '11, an Israeli High Court of Justice ruling given by President Justice Dorit Beinisch allowed the state and Israeli entrepreneurs to loot West Bank quarries. The judgment blatantly contradicts the principles laid out by the Court over 30 years, as well as international law. It may enable Israel to treat the West Bank and its resources as annexed territory, while ignoring Palestinians' rights.

On 29 Oct. '11, Palestinian residents of Beit Ummar demonstrated on part of their land against theft of their lands. A B'Tselem volunteer documented settlers entering the security buffer strip surrounding the adjacent Carmei Tzur settlement, and throwing stones at the demonstrators. Soldiers at the scene did not try to stop the assault; instead, they removed the Palestinians by shooting tear gas and throwing stun grenades.