An Israeli newspaper said that the ministerial committee for legislation at the Knesset would study a bill on Sunday that would allow Jewish settlers to acquire land rights in the occupied West Bank.
Members of the Knesset cannot discuss bills and vote them into laws before this ministerial committee whose members are ministers approve them for discussion on the floor of the Knesset.
According to Haaretz newspaper the explanatory notes affixed to the bill which is sponsored by MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) say that the current situation is based on a 1953 Jordanian law which prevented anyone from buying land in the West Bank unless they were Jordanian citizens or citizens of another Arab country. That law remained in force after Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 six-day war.
In the early 1970s an Israeli way was found to circumvent the law and allow settlers to buy land there through a special order stating that anybody could buy land through a company registered in the West Bank regardless of who owned the company.
That enabled Jews to set up companies registered in the West Bank and use them to buy land the newspaper affirmed.
Smotrich’s bill aims to eliminate this disparity and simply state that anyone can buy land in the occupied West Bank. “The fact that an Israeli currently can’t buy land there just because he is an Israeli is unacceptable” the bill’s explanatory notes said.
