Bethlehem - Arab Today
In spite of Israeli opposition positions ,International human rights organizations ,Western countries supporting Israel like UK Prime Minster Israel Passes Contentious Palestinian Land-grab Bill in Late Night Vote.
According Israeli News paper haaretRight praises vote as ‘historic day for the settlement movement’ | Bill allows Israel to declare private Palestinian land state property.
Israeli opposition warns: bill will land Israel in The Hague.
Chairman of the opposition, lawmaker Isaac Herzog, took to the Knesset’s podium ahead of the vote and warned that “it was not too late to stop the horror of a freight train. The train leaves from here will only stop at The Hague,” Herzog said in reference to the International Criminal Court.
“Its cars will carry international indictments against Israeli and Jewish soldiers and officers. This indictment will be signed by the prime minister of Israel.”
“Its cars will carry international indictments against Israeli and Jewish soldiers and officers. This indictment will be signed by the prime minister of Israel.”
British Prime Minister Theresa May told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an Israeli bill legalizing the expropriation of privately owned Palestinian land is unhelpful and would make things more difficult for Israel’s friends around the world, Haaretz has learned.
At the start of their meeting, May told Netanyahu that the British government is committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu told May that he shares her desire for peace in the region, but avoided voicing an explicit support of the two-state solution.
Netanyahu: I informed the White House
After his meeting with May on Monday afternoon, Netanyahu told reporters that the vote slated for Monday on the bill will go ahead as planned.
He added that he had informed the White House of his intention of putting the legislation to a vote and said he will return from the U.K. on Monday night to participate.
International human rights organizations
In response to the Knesset’s passage of the ‘Regularization’ bill that allows Israel to retroactively appropriate privately owned Palestinian land for settlements, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, said:“The Knesset’s passage of the ‘Regularization’ bill undoes years of established Israeli law and, coming just weeks after the Security Council’s unanimous passage of Resolution 2234 on the illegality of settlements, reflects Israel’s manifest disregard of international law.
The bill further entrenches the current reality in the West Bank of de facto permanent occupation where Israeli settlers and Palestinians living in the same territory are subject to ‘separate and unequal’ systems of laws, rules and services.
Israeli officials driving settlement policy should know that the Trump administration cannot shield them from the scrutiny of the International Criminal Court, where the prosecutor continues to examine unlawful Israeli settlement activity.”
Source :PNN