Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit approved the use of a special 1967 order to legalize settlement buildings on private Palestinian land the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Sunday.
During a meeting attended by several Israeli judicial officials Mandelblit said the “Order Concerning Government Property” which was issued in July 1967 could be invoked to expropriate Palestinian land.
Clause 5 of the order states that “any transaction concluded in good faith between the authorities and another person … will not be struck down and is valid even if it is proven that the asset was not government property at the time of its purchase.”
Mandelblit’s office said in a document that the clause had rarely been used in almost five decades but “the need to make use of it has arisen now.”
Back in February the Israeli parliament known as the Knesset passed a law on the expropriation of privately-owned Palestinian land in the West Bank where Israeli settlements or outposts have been constructed.
However Palestinians filed petitions to the Israeli High Court against the law.
Mandelblit proposed that the Israeli parliament suspend the land garb law until the court rules on the petitions and the Knesset accepted the bid.
Dror Etkes Israeli anti-settlement activist said the document by Mandelblit’s office seems to be “a parallel path being prepared … for the day after the High Court tosses the [expropriation] law into the garbage.”
“The purpose of this legal construction rotten from the foundation is to raise the claim of ‘good faith’ wherever Israel has stolen private Palestinian land and given it to settlers” he said. “This is a situation in which lies denial violence and manipulation prevail – that is everything except good faith.”
In recent months Tel Aviv has stepped up its settlement construction activities in the occupied Palestinian territories in a blatant violation of international law and in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.
The resolution which was passed last December states that Israel’s establishment of settlements in the occupied territories including East Jerusalem “had no legal validity” and urges Israel to immediately and completely cease all its settlement activities.
