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A bill against peace

Dec 07,2016 - Last updated at Dec 07,2016

Despite a worldwide outcry over an Israeli bill that could legalise some 4,000 settler housing units in the occupied West Bank, the Knesset has given initial approval to the legislation. 

The vote came after a “deal” was struck between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the main backer of the bill, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, on a revised bill. 

The so-called compromise agreement between Netanyahu and Bennett did not change the fundamentals of the controversial draft legislation, as it continues to aim for the legalisation of the Jewish houses built on privately owned Palestinian land. 

Some 400,000 Israeli settlers currently live in the West Bank, excluding occupied East Jerusalem, along with 2.6 million Palestinians.

The proposed revised bill is now expected to sail through the Knesset in its final form, having passed the first of three votes required for it to become law. 

This will further exacerbate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict amidst the already floundering peace efforts.

Even Isaac Herzog, the head of the Israeli Labour Party, the main opposition party, described the bill as a clear contravention of not only international law but also Israel’s own legal standards. 

Herzog went on to say that the final approval of the bill would amount to “theft” of Palestinian private property, pure and simple. 

Whether the Knesset endorses the controversial legislation or not will not really change the fundamentals regarding Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, which have continued unabated despite international objections. 

There are more than half-a-million Jewish settlers now living in the occupied Palestinian land, and all international efforts — including those adopted by the UN Security Council — have failed to stop this Israeli colonisation and land grabbing policy. 

If this policy is legalised, the already dimming chances for a peaceful, two-state solution will become a practical impossibility. The Palestinians have described it as the most dangerous Israeli move since the West Bank’s occupation in 1967. 

The US, the UN and the EU have often warned that settlement building reduces the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict.

However, with the impending change in US government, it is still unclear whether Washington’s position on key issues in the Middle East conflict — such as settlements, Jerusalem and the two-state solution — will markedly change.

The Palestinians must be now waiting impatiently for US President-elect Donald Trump to announce his policy on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the sooner Trump makes his policy loud and clear, the better for all concerned.

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