Israel’s Jerusalem District Court has legalized settler homes built without permits on privately owned Palestinian lands in the West Bank.
Haaretz reported that a final ruling in the case involving the northern West Bank settlement of Alei Zahav could provide judicial grounds for the authorization of up to 2000 settlement units whose legal status has been in dispute.
According to the Hebrew newspaper last month the court accepted the state’s position that settlement construction on private Palestinian land can be legalized retroactively if the land had “mistakenly” been thought to belong to the state.
“The state has been relying on this legal argument for a number of months” Haaretz said. The same legal concept is also to be taken up in another case involving the West Bank outpost of Mitzpeh Kramim.
