Amona bill vote could scupper bid to delay demolition

The attorney general on Thursday warned that a planned vote in favor of a bill to recognize illegal settler outposts would likely lead the High Court to reject a government bid to further delay the demolition of a large West Bank outpost.

Following the warning by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposes the bill, said he would hold a discussion on the matter Sunday, at a meeting of coalition leaders, Haaretz reported.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) announced earlier this week that the bill would be brought to a vote in the Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday, after repeated deferrals.

Right-wing lawmakers fear that any further delay would leave insufficient time to push the legislation through the Knesset before December 25 — the date the Supreme Court has set for the demolition of the outpost, Amona, which lies east of Ramallah on what has been ruled private Palestinian land.

The Supreme Court set the date in 2014, after a decade of legal wrangling.

Earlier this month, the government asked the court to defer the demolition order by seven months.

The issue has put Netanyahu in a complicated position. One the one hand, the impending evacuation threatens to destabilize his coalition, which relies heavily on the pro-settlement right.

But the attorney general has warned that legislation to outflank a High Court ruling would be unconstitutional and harm the rule of law, and that he therefore would not be able to defend the government in court.

Right-wing lawmakers have been seeking a legal loophole to prevent an evacuation with a bill that would formally recognize West Bank outposts.

An earlier version of the bill, proposed by Jewish Home MK Shuli Moalem-Refaeli, was deemed unconstitutional by Mandelblit, as was a revised bill submitted by Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich and also signed by Likud MKs David Bitan — the chairman of the coalition — and Yoav Kisch.

The revised bill says that unauthorized construction on privately owned Palestinian land would be legalized if the residents can “prove government involvement.”

Furthermore, while Moalem-Refaeli’s bill allowed the government to appropriate land, the new draft only gives it the right to use the plots, which would remain the property of their original owners.

The state would compensate the owners financially or with alternative plots, according to their individual requests, the proposal stipulates. It would also appoint an Israeli legal authority to deal with the lawsuits.

The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the government request to delay Amona’s demolition by seven months.

The outpost, founded in 1995, is home to about 40 families. It is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts — built without permission but generally tolerated by the government — that dot the West Bank. A partial evacuation a decade ago sparked violent clashes between residents and security forces and it is feared a new evacuation could trigger another showdown.

In 2008, a group of Palestinians represented by the Israeli rights group Yesh Din petitioned the Supreme Court claiming Amona settlers had encroached on their land and demanding the entire outpost be dismantled. The court petition set off a protracted legal battle that saw a number of proposed evacuation dates missed and repeatedly delayed until the final ruling in 2014 ordered the state to demolish the outpost by December 25, 2016. The state also agreed to compensate the landowners with about $75,000.

The government recently approved the construction of 98 new housing units in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh to compensate homeowners of Amona, drawing a furious response from Washington.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.