MKs charge ‘civil law’ bill will lead to settlement annexation

Lawmakers on Sunday harshly condemned a bill that would force the army to extend civil laws to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, with some coalition ministers threatening to appeal a committee’s green-lighting of the proposal.

Left-wing lawmakers said the legislation, which would force the IDF’s Central Command to issue military directives for Israelis living in West Bank settlements that match civil laws passed in the Knesset, would effectively lead to a de facto annexation of the territories beyond the Green Line.

“The Knesset is operating in violation of international law to which Israel is committed,” Meretz head Zahava Gal-on said, according to the Walla news site.

“Those who chose to live in settlements knew full well that those were occupied territories, and they now cry out like [hypocrites] and demand the de facto annexation of the West Bank, thus applying [the law] only to settlers and producing a policy of apartheid and discrimination.”

Hadash party MK Dov Khenin said the bill signaled to the Palestinians that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was uninterested in reaching a viable peace agreement.

“Each day, the Netanyahu government breaks another record towards inflaming the situation,” Walla reported Khenin as saying.

“The decision to apply Israel’s laws in the West Bank is both serious and dangerous; it is a clear message to the Palestinians, to the Israeli public and to the world that the Netanyahu government is not a partner for peace.”

On Sunday, the bill passed the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, the cabinet committee that decides if the government will support a bill, with six votes in favor and four opposed.

The bill got the backing of the committee after Netanyahu said he would not demand coalition discipline on the vote.

Following the vote, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who also serves as Ministerial Committee chairperson, announced that she would appeal against the decision, Israel Radio reported. Several Yesh Atid party lawmakers also said they would appeal the move.

Under current Israeli law, the West Bank is not part of Israeli territory to which Israeli civil law applies — with the exception of East Jerusalem. The military governor of the West Bank, who is also the IDF’s OC Central Command, is empowered to issue military directives related to civilian life in the area, including labor protections, regulation of commerce and the like.

The bill, debated Sunday in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, requires that the army issue a directive matching the stipulations of any new civil legislation passed in the Knesset within 45 days of its passage.

The legislation only applies to Israeli citizens, and is meant to grant Israelis in the West Bank the protections of Israeli civil law without requiring an Israeli annexation of Jewish-settled parts of the territory.

The bill is sponsored by MKs Yariv Levin (Likud) and Orit Strock (Jewish Home), who in a joint statement said it “will protect the rights and obligations of all Israelis in Judea and Samaria [the Hebrew term for the West Bank].”

The lawmakers added that “there is no justifiable reason why Israeli citizens living in Judea and Samaria are unable to self-determine rights and obligations through the representatives they elected to the Knesset for this purpose, without applying sovereignty to the territory,” the Haaretz daily reported.

The MKs also said Israeli citizens who reside in the West Bank are being discriminated against under current Israeli law, since the military directives in place in the West Bank are behind Israeli civil law on a series of issues.

Strock and Levin said implementing the bill would not change the diplomatic status of the settlements or contradict international law, as it would not change the status of the areas in question.

The bill’s co-sponsors include coalition chairman MK Ze’ev Elkin (Likud), Jewish Home faction chair MK Ayelet Shaked, Shas faction chair Avraham Michaeli, Knesset Law Committee chair MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beytenu) and United Torah Judaism faction chair MK Menachem Eliezer Mozes.

In a legal opinion submitted to the cabinet committee, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said he opposed the proposed bill on the grounds that it would undermine the authority of the IDF Central Command in administering the territory, and noted that there are other mechanisms in place to implement Israeli civil and criminal statutes in the West Bank.

Adiv Sterman contributed to this report.