The Israeli District Court in occupied Jerusalem green-lighted in a ruling issued Tuesday evening the legalization of the Mitzpe Kramim settlement illegally built on a Palestinian-owned land in the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
Using a policy known as “market regulation” Judge Arnon Darel ruled that the outpost built without the necessary permits need not be razed because the settlers erected the community “in good faith” and have rights to the property Israeli media sources reported.
The sources considered the ruling as an unprecedented legal tactic that could pave the way for regulating dozens of other illegal settlements in occupied West Bank.
Israel’s ultranationalist justice minister Ayelet Shaked on Wednesday hailed the Israeli court’s decision announced late on Tuesday relating to Mitzpe Kramim an outpost established in 1999 near the Palestinian city of Ramallah and now home to 40 settler families.
“The ruling … is an important achievement for settlement in Judea and Samaria” Shaked wrote on Twitter using the Biblical names for the West Bank.
Israel’s Peace Now organization said the “granting of property rights to criminals who settled in an illegal outpost … without permits on private Palestinian land is outrageous”.
It noted that Israel’s right-wing government which originally had opposed the settlers’ land claim later supported their position in an attempt to implement a controversial law on unauthorized settlement.
Although settlements building in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal under international law Israel continues to expand existing settlements as well as annexing more Palestinian land to create new outposts. The cumulative effect has been to deny Palestinians the ability to create a viable state in even a small part of historic Palestine.
