Israel Supreme Court strikes down law legalizing settler homes on privately owned Palestinian land

The Israelian Supreme Court has struck down a law on Tuesday that had retroactively legalized somewhere around 4,000 settler homes built on privately owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. According to a 2017 measure, it was held that settlers could remain on land if they built on the lands, without any prior knowledge of Palestinian ownership, or if homes were built at the state’s direction. In the present case, a nine-judge bench voted to repeal this 2017 measure. Eight judges had voted in favor, while one had voted against.

Chief Justice Esther Hayut wrote in the panel’s ruling that, “The law unequally infringes on the property rights of Palestinian residents while giving preference to the proprietary interests of Israeli settlers.”

This move by the court has not been appreciated by the several political figures of Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party which said that it was “unfortunate” that the court had intervened on “an important law for settlement activity and its future” and that it would work to re-enact it.

There has been a long ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine regarding land area, which has resulted in devastation of property but most importantly human life on both sides, but more on the Palestinian side. Under Netanyahu, the government has pledged to extend sovereignty to Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and which Palestinians seek for a state.