Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, has urged Israeli authorities to halt the expansion of Gilo settlement “onto wide swaths of land belonging to the Palestinian town of Beit Jala”, located between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
Adalah argues that the planned expansion “infringes the basic constitutional rights of Beit Jala’s 15,700 Palestinian residents”, noting that “it will result in expropriation of land from the Palestinian population for the express interests of the occupying power.”
In the letter, sent on behalf of the Beit Jala municipality, Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara states that “the plan entails fundamental alterations to the demographic composition and physical reality in the area via the expansion of the Gilo settlement and the transfer by the occupying power of its civilian population into the occupied territory.”
“These actions violate international law as related to Israel as an occupying power in the region.”