Israels øverste retsinstans slår fast, at alle er lige for loven, og det gælder også ulovlige jødiske bosættelser på den israelsk-besatte vestbred af Jordan-floden – afviser bosætter-aftale med regeringen.
Israel’s top court has rejected a deal between the government and Jewish settlers to delay evacuation of an illegal West Bank outpost until 2015, BBC online reports Monday.
The Supreme Court had earlier ruled that the post must be demolished (fjernet) by the end of the month, because it was built on privately-owned Palestinian land.
But the government appealed for the demolition to be postponed for three-and-a-half years. The delay was to allow settlers to rebuild their homes at another site.
The court has extended the evacuation deadline until August. Migron, north of Jerusalem and home to 280 settlers, is one of the largest unauthorised West Bank settlements.
A panel of three judges made the decision unanimously. In the court’s ruling, Justice Mirian Naor described the government-proposed postponement as “unreasonable”. “All are subject to the law and the moment of truth has arrived,” she said.
Under the deal, settlers were to be moved to a nearby hill and the current site would have been put under Israeli military control.
About 500.000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
These settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
About 4.000 of them live in several dozen hill-top outposts on the West Bank erected without formal government approval since the late 1990s.
The outposts are illegal under Israeli law and Israel agreed to remove them under the 2003 Roadmap peace plan, BBC notes.