On Monday, the Israeli parliament approved the Regulation Law that retroactively legalizes almost 4,000 Israeli homes in the West Bank.

"This represents a further serious setback for the Middle East Peace Process," Flanagan stated. "It has been widely criticised both internationally and by many in Israel. It is a deepening of the settlements and a flagrant violation of international law."

Flanagan urged the Israeli government not to implement the law and reiterated Ireland's commitment to a two-state solution that benefits both Israelis and Palestinians.

Over 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to United Nations figures. The settlements are considered illegal by the United Nations, and West Bank territory is considered occupied territory by the International Court of Justice. The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since 1967. </s> (JTA) — Hundreds of Israeli police officers evacuated three of nine homes slated to be demolished in a West Bank settlement.

The homes located in the West Bank settlement of Ofra were ordered demolished by Israel’s Supreme Court after it was determined that they were built on Palestinian-owned land. The evacuation began Tuesday ahead of a March 5 court-ordered deadline for tearing them down.

Families in eight of the homes agreed to evacuate peacefully, but hundreds of pro-settlement youth have taken over the remaining house, which was unoccupied.

One teen has been arrested and three police officers injures so far in the evacuation.

The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request to seal the homes instead of demolishing them, The court also determined that the arrangements law, which legalizes West Bank outposts built on private Palestinian land, does not apply to these homes.

The homes were built in 2008. </s> Israel's top court says West Bank village can be demolished

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for the demolition of a Bedouin village in the West Bank, rejecting a final appeal in a case that has drawn heavy international criticism and become a rallying cry for the Palestinians.

In its decision, the court rejected an appeal to block the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar. It said that a stay would expire in a week, and the encampment could then be legally torn down. There was no date immediately announced for the demolition.

The fate of Khan al-Ahmar, just east of Jerusalem, has raised grave concerns from the United Nations, the European Union and others. Palestinian leaders have repeatedly gathered at the spot to protest the planned demolition.

Israel claims the village, an encampment of corrugated shacks outside the Kfar Adumim settlement, was illegally built and has offered to resettle residents 12 kilometers, about seven miles, away. But critics say it's impossible for Palestinians to get building permits and that the demolition is meant to make room for an Israeli settlement.

The three judges hearing the appeal said they were presented no evidence to warrant overturning the previous verdict and there was no question over the illegality of the construction on the site.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman lauded the judges for their "brave" ruling in the face of a "hypocritical" campaign directed by the Palestinians, the Israeli left and European countries.

"No one is above the law. No one can stop us from implementing our sovereignty and responsibility as a state," he said.

The village is in the 60 percent of the West Bank known as Area C, which remains under exclusive Israeli control and is home to dozens of Israeli settlements. Israel places severe restrictions on Palestinian development there and home demolitions are not unusual.

In rare cases, Israel has also evicted Jewish settlers who have squatted illegally. But settlers generally have a much easier time receiving building permits, and the government often retroactively legalizes unauthorized outposts, looks the other way or offers compensation to uprooted settlers.

As part of interim peace deals in the 1990s, the West Bank was carved up into autonomous and semi-autonomous Palestinian areas, known as Areas A and B, and Area C, which is home to some 400,000 Israeli settlers.

The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and say that Area C, home to an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Palestinians, is crucial to the economic development of their future state.Israel says the structures that make up the Khan al-Ahmar encampment, which include an Italian-funded school, pose a threat to residents because of their proximity to a highway. But critics have dismissed this claim as a ploy to remove the village's 180 or so residents to clear the way for new Jewish settlements.

The tribe of previously nomadic Bedouin have lived in the area for decades after migrating from the southern Negev desert after Israel's creation in 1948, herding and grazing goats and sheep in the hills east of Jerusalem in the West Bank's narrowest part. In time, they found themselves nestled between two major Israeli settlements and developers were calling for them to be evacuated. The case has been locked in legal limbo for nearly a decade, with the court's issuing repeated stays, but Wednesday's ruling appears to remove the final obstacle.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights' office has called on Israel to abandon its plans and said the destruction of private property by an occupying power violates international law. The European Union has asked Israel to reconsider the planned demolition.

The West Bank's Arab Bedouin are a small, impoverished minority among the broader Palestinian population. Like many other Bedouin encampments, residents of Khan al-Ahmar live in corrugated shacks or tents, often without electricity or running water, and raise livestock.

The Palestinian Education Ministry recently decided to start the schoolyear early for 170 elementary students in Khan al-Ahmar and four nearby Bedouin communities to try to pre-empt any Israeli move. </s> Israeli officials have approved the construction of 3,000 new settlement units in the West Bank as part of a massive expansion policy in occupied Palestinian territory.

"[Israeli] Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have decided to authorize the construction of 3,000 new housing units," the defense ministry said in a statement.

According to the statement, 2,000 of the units are ready to be put on the market, while the rest are in various stages of planning.

"We're in a new era where life in Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank) is returning to its natural course," said Lieberman, who himself has long lived in a West Bank settlement.

Since Trump took office with top aides sympathetic to the settlement enterprise, the government has announced a string of new projects that will add more than 6,000 homes for Jewish settlers.

On Jan. 22, Jerusalem's municipality approved the construction of 566 new settlement units in east Jerusalem. The plans, approved by Netanyahu and Lieberman, mark the largest recent announcement of settlement building by Israel.

"We are building and will continue to build," Netanyahu said in the statement.

On Jan. 24, Netanyahu approved the construction of 2,500 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank, according to a statement issued by his Office.

Two days later on Jan. 26, Israeli officials gave the final approval for 153 settler homes in east Jerusalem.

"I'm going to deliver permits for thousands of homes in Jerusalem in the coming months," Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Meir had said at the time.

Meanwhile, Trump has pledged strong support for Israel, and Netanyahu's government has moved quickly to take advantage. The prime minister has said he sees the Trump presidency as offering "significant opportunities" after facing "huge pressures" from Barack Obama.

The accelerated settlement expansion has deeply concerned those seeking to salvage a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The former Obama administration despaired of Israel's accelerating settlement expansion and, in a sharp break with longstanding policy, withheld its veto on a critical U.N. Security Council resolution in its final days.

The international community considers all Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land as illegal and regards their construction as the biggest obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

But in a significant break with the Obama administration, Trump's White House has not condemned any of the four settlement expansions announced by Israel since he took office.

The Palestinians want the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, areas captured by Israel in the 1967 war, as part of their hoped-for state. The Palestinians want these areas, along with the Gaza Strip, for the establishment of a future Palestinian state.

International law views the West Bank and east Jerusalem as "occupied territories" and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity on the land as illegal.

Roughly 500,000 Israelis now live in more than 100 Jewish-only settlements built since Israel occupied the Palestinian West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967. </s> PARIS: The ramp-up of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories opens the way to their annexation, French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday.

Israel passed a law on Monday retroactively legalising about 4,000 settler homes built on privately owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, a measure that has drawn international concern.

The ramp-up of settlements "would open the way to the annexation of occupied territories", Hollande said at news conference after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"I think that Israel and its government could revise this text," Hollande added.

"This law is contrary to international law," Abbas said. "It's an aggression against our people," he added. </s> Amid protesters’ cries of “Jews don’t expel Jews,” hundreds of Israeli police Tuesday enforced a high court order to extract residents from nine homes illegally built on private property belonging to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Protesters at the Ofra settlement carried banners blaming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government for enforcing the court’s orders and some demonstrators scuffled with police as officers dragged dozens of people out of the homes.

The Ofra evacuation dealt a second blow in less than a month to Israel’s powerful movement supporting Jewish settlers. It came only weeks after Israel carried out a rare removal of several hundred settlers at the nearby Amona hilltop outpost.

Though the settler lobby has been emboldened to press for settlement expansion and annexation because of President Trump’s apparent recent step back from endorsement of a Palestinian state, the evacuations highlight Israel’s ongoing trials over how to handle thousands of settler homes built on Palestinian property.

“This is a fight for all of Judea and Samaria,” said protester Raphael Rosenfelder, 19, referring to the territories of the West Bank by their biblical names. “Last month they kicked out 40 families at Amona. Now its these nine houses. Next it will be a settlement with thousands of families.”

Some protesters had crowded inside and on the roof of one of the houses.

To block future court-ordered settlement evacuations like those at Ofra and Amona, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed a controversial law in February allowing for the retroactive expropriation and legalization of outposts and settlement homes built on property belonging to Palestinians.

The law, which opponents say legalizes land theft and marks a de-facto annexation of West Bank land, stirred criticism from Palestinians, some Israelis and the international community. Israel’s attorney general is refusing to defend the legislation when the Supreme Court considers an appeal against the law.

Israeli supporters of the law say it is necessary to prevent legal challenges brought by a minority of human rights groups seeking to reverse government policies.

Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group that petitioned the high court in 2008 with landowners from the village of Ein Yabrud, welcomed the implementation of the demolition order.

“It is unfortunate this was not done before the houses were inhabited,’’ the statement said.

Outside each of the nine houses, protesters opposed to the evacuations hung giant banners with portraits and the names of each family. The banners also were critical of the government, using sarcasm with a statement reading, “This is a right-wing government.’’

Minutes after Israeli police escorted him out of his home of the last nine years, Netzach Brodt, a 32-year-old lawyer, stared blankly at the ground while vowing to build a bigger house elsewhere in the settlement for his wife and three young children. The family likes Ofra, which has a population of several thousand people, he said.

Brodt said he was unaware of a legal challenge when he bought the two-story house.

“We’re going to take a [financial] hit .… We’re scarred from the whole situation,’’ he said. “We have hard feelings toward successive Israeli governments, who, since the Six Day War hasn’t had the courage to say what the policy is in Judea and Samaria.”

Palestinians and much of the international community consider all Israeli building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal. In recent months the United Nations, the U.S. and European countries warned that settlement expansion was rapidly endangering prospects for peace through a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.

“This a long time in the making and an excruciating process for the landowners. It took many years,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization. “They shouldn’t have been allowed to settle there in the first place.”

There was significantly less resistance in Ofra than at the Amona evacuation, which attracted thousands of protesters who barricaded themselves in mobile homes, chained themselves together and resisted police over two days.

Israel’s police spokesman said 100 people were carted out of Ofra on buses, and 11 officers suffered minor injuries. Hundreds of protesters joined the families in the houses to make the evacuation more difficult.

“We left crying,” said Naama Shtern, an 18-year-old high school student who said she joined the families in the houses to disrupt the evacuations.

“The land of Israel is dear to us. It hurts that a right-wing government is doing this.”

By dusk, Israeli heavy machinery began demolishing the houses. Watching police struggle with protesters, Nissim Slomiansky, a lawmaker from the pro-settlement Jewish Home Party, said he hoped the new legalization law would help prevent such scenes in the future.

“I hope these will be the last places evacuated,” he said. “In a modern and democratic country, those who determine policy is the Knesset — which is the sovereign — and not the court.’’ </s> Settlers and dozens of pro-settlement activists who flocked to the Amona outpost to protest against the evacuation burned tyres and piled makeshift barricades at its entrance. But there was no immediate violence as columns of unarmed police walked towards prefabricated homes where some 330 settlers live. Several families with small children walked out of the outpost minutes before the operation began. But others said they would stay put and peacefully resist eviction.

"We won't leave out homes on our own. Pull us out, and we'll go," Avihai Bavaron, one of the outpost's leaders, told reporters. "It is a black day for Zionism." Hours before the police operation, Israel announced plans for 3,000 more settlement homes in the West Bank, the third such declaration in eleven days since President Donald Trump took office. Trump has signalled he could be more accommodating toward such projects than his predecessor Barack Obama.

An announcement a week ago by Israel that it would build some 2,500 more homes in the West Bank, territory captured in a 1967 Middle East war, drew rebukes from the Palestinians and from the EU. It followed approval of more than 560 new homes in East Jerusalem days before.

Palestinians want the West Bank and Gaza Strip for an independent state, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The legal battle over Amona has dragged on for eight years. Under the latest Supreme Court ruling, it had to be evacuated by Feb. 8. In 2006 Amona saw a violent partial eviction, with nine shacks torn down by authorities. Police were confronted by thousands of settlers and more than 200 people were injured.

Most countries consider settlements illegal and an obstacle to peace, as they fragment territory Palestinians seek for a viable state. Israel disagrees, citing historical and political links to the land - which the Palestinians also assert - as well as security interests. The Israeli parliament is due to vote next week on a law that would retroactively legalise dozens of outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land without government authorisation.

Backed by the Israeli government but described as unconstitutional by the attorney-general, the bill is expected to pass. Legal experts said, however, it would not survive any challenge in the Supreme Court. Outposts usually start with pre-fabricated huts on remote hilltops, lived in by a handful of settlers. Over time, they acquire Israeli military protection and hook up to water and electricity networks, slowly becoming more formalised. </s> Israel has given green light to 153 additional settler homes in the occupied East Jerusalem after 2,500 housing units were approved in the West Bank. Another 11,000 buildings are expected to receive building permits, according to Jerusalem’s deputy mayor.

Israeli authorities are expanding plans for housing development on occupied Palestinian territory which is considered illegal by international law. The move comes after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, who has voiced strong support for Israel, and dismissed criticism of the controversial settlement policy, which the previous White House administration maintained.



The permits by a city planning committee had been put on hold due to pressure from Barack Obama’s administration, Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Meir Turgeman said, according to The Times of Israel.

Earlier Sunday, the committee authorized the construction of 556 settler homes in east Jerusalem followed by 2,500 homes in the West Bank approved on Tuesday. 



“I’m going to deliver permits for thousands of homes in Jerusalem in the coming months,” Turgeman said.



The plans were approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. The houses are to allow the settlements “to maintain regular daily life,” the ministry said in a statement.



“We’re building – and will continue to build,” Netanyahu said Tuesday, commenting on the approval.



Palestinians have called the announcement “land theft and colonialism.” The outcry came following the recent anti-settlement resolution at the United Nations.



Israel’s actions were also condemned by the United Nations along with the European Union on Wednesday.

Most part of the 2,500 buildings approved on Tuesday are to be set up in the large settlement areas in the city of Ariel as well as in the settlement of Givat Ze’ev, located north of Jerusalem.



According to Israeli media, the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, sponsored this settlement.



Trump has promised strong support to Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding Israeli settlement policies unlike his predecessor Barack Obama. Trump may also move the US embassy to Jerusalem despite its contested legal status.



On Monday, Netanyahu reportedly said that he was planning to lift all restrictions on Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Haaretz newspaper wrote, citing senior officials briefed on the situation. </s> Hundreds of right-wing activists gathered in the West Bank settlement of Ofra, as Israeli police begin the evacuation of nine settler homes slated for demolition on Tuesday.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the homes were illegally built on private Palestinian land and ordered them evicted by March 5. The court rejected last minute petitions to halt the demolition or have the buildings sealed off.

Dozens of youths barricaded themselves in some of the houses, climbing on the roofs, shouting slogans at the police officers, and calling them “Nazis.” A 17-year-old was arrested after he attacked the police. Three officers were slightly injured, Haaretz reported.

Police had to carry some of the residents out of their houses as they refused to leave on their own. Some of the settlers even announced hunger strikes in protest of the evacuation.

“We feel that this is not right at all, what’s being done here: the destruction of these homes in the center of a Jewish town, in the center of a populated town that was established legally 42 years ago,” said Eliana Passentin, a spokeswoman for the local settler regional council, Reuters reports.

Leading rabbis have also gathered at the West Bank settlements to support the families from the nine homes. Earlier this month, over 5,000 people protested the evacuation at a demonstration in Ofra, with the leader of the National-Religious rabbis, Haim Druckman, addressing the public and saying “we will continue to settle the Land of Israel… We are not thieves.”

All Israeli settlements are considered to be illegal according to international law, yet there are around 550,000 Israelis living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel passes the Regulation Law which retroactively legalizes 4,000 housing units in 16 settlements on Area C West Bank occupied Palestinian territories.