Israel’s High Court dismisses petition to evacuate illegal Homesh outpost in West Bank

The appeal against the illegal West Bank outpost of Homesh, urging its evacuation to allow Palestinian landowners access to their land, was dismissed by Israel’s High Court of Justice.

According to Haaretz, in her verdict High Court Justice Yael Wilner claimed that the outpost’s buildings were relocated from privately-owned Palestinian land and therefore negates the claim of illegal construction.

Despite the access road leading to the outpost and occupation forces remaining on Palestinian-owned land, Wilner claimed these factors are not central to the appeal.

It comes after the occupying government announced its intention to accelerate the approval process for settlement construction in June, in addition to giving Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich even more authority to approve expansions of illegal settlements.

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Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, acting on behalf of the Palestinian landowners, criticised the decision to annul the appeal, stating that the move legitimises the creation of a new Homesh settlement and serves as evidence of “apartheid rule” in the West Bank.

It said in a statement:

While throughout Israel people are fighting to protect the High Court as a symbol of democracy, today the justices proved that for the Palestinians in the West Bank, there is no defender and no law, and in the occupied territories might is right.

It added: “This shameful decision by the High Court justices is further evidence of the apartheid rule that has been established in the territories and which has become the norm, with the approval of the High Court of Justice.”

Israeli settlements often begin life as illegal outposts. It is a colonial strategy practised by every settler colonial state in their takeover of land and territory belonging to the indigenous population. In the case of Homesh, the illegal outpost was established in 1978 on confiscated land belonging to Palestinian residents of the nearby village of Burqa. It’s one of the countless ways in which Israel has created facts on the ground and rubber-stamped its immoral and illegal settler-colonialism.

Homesh was evacuated along with three other West Bank settlements in 2005.

The Disengagement Law prohibits Israelis from entering Homesh without special permission. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have agreed to amend the 2005 Disengagement Law which led to its evacuation, thus legalising the Homesh outpost.

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