Israel deletes 2015 law enabling return to illegal West Bank settlements

Israel’s far-right occupation government advanced a bill yesterday that will enable settlers to return to areas of the West Bank evacuated in 2005 as part of the Disengagement Law, enacted by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

According to Haaretz, the bill, headed by Likud Knesset member Yuli Edelstein, passed by a majority of 40 in favor, with 17 MK’s opposing it.

There is no longer any justification to prevent Israelis from entering and staying in the evacuated territory in northern Samaria, and therefore it is proposed to state that these sections [of the disengagement law] will no longer apply to the evacuated territory.

The bill would repeal the clauses of the Disengagement Law that ban Israelis from living in the region where the four illegal settlements of Homesh, Ganim, Kadim and Sanur previously stood in the northern Occupied West Bank.

Edelstein and Israeli National Missions Minister Orit Strook sponsored the measure following the request of the head of the Settlements Council in the Occupied West Bank, Yossi Dagan, who expressed his pleasure at the government’s decision.

This is the start of correcting a historical injustice. I expect the law to be completely repealed.

This is a struggle we have been waging for 18 years and we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, said Dagan last month after the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed the preliminary reading of the bill last month with 62 MK’s in favor and 36 against.

All of Israel’s settlements and settlers are illegal under international law.

In 2005, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon enacted a law requiring unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank, and the removal of 25 illegal settlements in the two areas.

Twenty-one settlements in Gaza have already been removed and 8,000 settlers have been evacuated. In the Occupied West Bank, four illegal settlements were evacuated but the structures in them were maintained and the areas labelled closed military zones.

Ex-Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo warned that Israel is facing disastrous and unprecedented danger. Cancelling laws and turning the judicial authority into a game in the hands of the ruling party means tearing up the independence document

Israel reached a very dangerous situation regarding the internal segregation that happened due to the right-wing plan to weaken the judicial system and turn the country into a dictatorship.

I had never imagined that we would reach this point. This is the most existential danger since the independence. The former intelligence official said that Israel does not need a nuclear bomb to be destroyed our state has decided to experience a self-destruction method.

Everyone is following up closely on what is happening with Washington, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, while this threat is not there. What is happening sends a message of weakness to the world.

Middle East Monitor / ABC Flash Point Invasion News 2023.