Israel rules settlement construction can continue

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the construction of the new illegal settlement of Amichai is permitted to continue.

The court ruled against a petition brought by rights groups including Peace Now, Yesh Din who demanded that the site be evacuated and demolished. The planning committee that approved the town, the petitioners said, “did not investigate whether there was even a need for establishing a town on the site designated.”

In addition, they said that the committee “did not evaluate the impact of its plan on the Palestinian population living in the area, as well as the impact of the plan on the environment and transportation issues.”

In its response, the court said that those criteria did not apply, as the only issues the court could consider was the legality of the town itself and whether it was built on privately owned Arab land.

In September 2017, Israeli occuptaion forces began construction of the first new settlement in the occupied West Bank since 1992. Amichai is set to be home to the 200-300 Jewish settlers who had been forcibly removed from the unofficial Amona outpost in January that year.

Read: Israel illegal settlement construction more than doubled in 2018

More Israeli settlements in Palestine – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]