New Likud MK submits settlement annexation legislation

A new Likud parliamentarian submitted on Tuesday a bill “for the application of Israeli sovereignty” in Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank and their access roads.

According to far-right news outlet Arutz Sheva, freshman MK Michal Shir (Likud) submitted her draft legislation immediately after being sworn in to the new Knesset.

“I submitted a bill that will regulate once and for all the absurd and discriminatory situation in the recognized Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley [the West Bank], and the access routes to them, a situation that excludes the citizens of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley from the rest of the country,” said Shir.

“The bill will stipulate that Israeli law will apply to all recognized Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley, and the access routes to them, including in the fields of health, economics, welfare, law and security,” the Likud MK added.

“The time has come to stop this oversight. The residents of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley are not second-class citizens.”

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The explanatory notes for the draft bill state that “Israeli citizens living in the area are not entitled to the same system of protection of civil laws as other citizens of the state…This creates clear discrimination whereby the Israeli citizen who is a resident of the ‘area’ is different from the Israeli citizen who is not a resident of the ‘area’.”

The bill’s notes further state that “the lack of economic security and legal inequality are reflected in a considerable number of Israeli laws that do not apply in the ‘area’, because they have not been translated into the necessary military regulations, such as: various municipal taxes, partial building laws, employee rights and even various traffic laws.”

The so-called “Sovereignty Movement”, which campaigns for the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, reportedly congratulated MK Shir on her draft bill, which it described as “faithful testimony to its ideological commitment to the Land of Israel and to the vision of sovereignty”.

Israeli broadcaster Kan had warned yesterday that the formation of the government coalition would be at the expense of the occupied West Bank with the Union of Right-Wing Parties conditioning their support to the coalition on the annexation of parts of the occupied Palestinian territory.

READ: More than 19,000 illegal settlement units built in Netanyahu era