Israeli officials have announced approval of wildcat settler units to be built at the illegal Homesh outpost in the West Bank.
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The far-right cabinet responded to a petition filed by the so-called high court of justice on Friday, saying that minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant had ordered the military to allow the illegal expansion at Homesh in late May.
The site in the northern West Bank has long hosted a makeshift yeshiva – an extremist educational institution, which was established on private Palestinian land.
As part of attempts to legalize the unlawful outpost, extremist settlers moved a caravan onto an adjacent hilltop and started operating the yeshiva from there instead.
The Israeli military initially moved to block the plan as it was being conducted without the necessary permits, but Gallant ordered the military to stand down.
The Yesh Din rights group that filed the petition sent attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara a letter, urging her to open a criminal probe against Gallant and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich. Baharav-Miara has so far held off on such a move.
In its response to the high court petition, the Israeli cabinet alleged that though the transfer of the yeshiva may have been illegal, Palestinian farmers can now access their land where the old Homesh yeshiva used to be located.
This is not actually the case though, since an Israeli military checkpoint has been established outside the outpost and continues to prevent Palestinians from reaching their lands.
Yesh Din slammed the response, saying authorities violated their explicit commitment to the court not to seek to establish a permanent settlement at Homesh, which was evacuated along with several other northern West Bank communities as part of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
While all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, Israel has stepped up settlement expansion in blatant violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East al-Quds as its capital.
The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued illegal settlement expansion.
