Amona is most likely going to be evacuated on December 25 as was scheduled about two years ago.
The political and legal forces pushing in that direction are likely stronger than those trying to save Amona.
But what if the currently-debated Legalizations Bill passes or what if Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit’s Monday night suggestion of slightly moving the Amona settlers to an abandoned area nearby for eight months goes forward? How would this impact Israeli leaders and settlement leaders before the International Criminal Court? The ICC has been preliminary examining alleged war crimes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since January 2015 when it recognized Palestine as a state over vehement Israeli objections.
Though most attention has focused on whether the ICC will open full criminal investigations relating to the IDF’s conduct in the 2014 Gaza war, it is also deciding whether to criminally investigate the Israeli settlement enterprise.
Israeli politicians renew push to retroactively legalize 2,000 settler homes
(MK Hotovely on legality of settlement resolution)
The scenarios need to be played out step by step to see how the ICC may react.
Firstly, regarding the Legalizations Bill scenario, the Knesset would need to pass the bill over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s objections.
If it did pass, the December 25 evacuation date would temporarily be invalid, as suddenly Amona and around 2,000 other currently-unauthorized homes on private Palestinian land in the West Bank would all have been retroactively legalized.
But this would likely be just another delay like the failed attempt to get the High Court of Justice to postpone the December 25 evacuation for more talks on voluntary relocation with the Amona settlers.
When the settlers of Amona and Netanyahu recently asked the High Court to indefinitely delay the evacuation of the Amona outpost beyond December 25, they had not learned the lesson of the settlers of Migron.
The Migron settlers and Netanyahu attempted the exact same thing, but, rightly or wrongly, were eventually evacuated in September 2012.
The High Court was not going to be an address that would save Amona.
The Legalizations Bill would remove the most immediate hoop to keeping the Amona outpost intact.
A 2005 government-sponsored study sealed the fate of Migron, Amona and others, as illegal outposts by categorizing them as such.
The Legalizations Bill is an attempt to realize the 2011 Edmund Levy Report goals of overriding the 2005 report.
The Levy Report, like the Legalizations Bill, offered to legalize outposts which were retroactively unauthorized on a range of grounds, such as indirect government authorization by facilitating outpost’ infrastructure and the absence of concrete competing claims to the land.
In Migron, the High Court ignored attempts to pressure the government with political threats or allusions that the Right may not be able to control violent responses from some of those being evacuated. Likewise it was also going to be ignored in Amona and will be ignored in the future.
Right or wrong, conventional solid sounding legal arguments, such as that there is no concrete Palestinian claimant to “private property,” that Palestinian claimants have shoddy evidence or that their evidence is vague about exactly what areas they own, was never going to convince the High Court to back off evacuations of outposts which the state has defined as unauthorized.
In contrast, the Legalizations Bill changes the legal framework in which the High Court analyzes whether Amona must be evacuated.
The question had been: when will the state enforce its own policy to evacuate unauthorized outposts on private Palestinian land?
If the bill passes, the question becomes: is it legal to essentially annex private Palestinian land in certain circumstances where the land was not being used by Palestinians and compensation is provided?
Even Mandelblit, who was picked partially for being deferential to the Knesset and close to Netanyahu, says that he could not defend such a move in the High Court as it would blatantly violate international law. So the High Court would likely strike the law as unconstitutional and we would end there.
But if the High Court decides it cannot veto the law, Mandelblit and essentially the entire government legal establishment have said that annexing the land would push the ICC into opening a full criminal investigation whereas it may currently be on the fence.
Northwestern Professor Eugene Kontorovich, expressing the opinion of many on the Israeli Right, recently told the Knesset Law, Justice and Constitution Committee that the ICC should not be decisive on the issue.
He said that the international law of occupation does not apply to Judea and Samaria and that there is nothing illegal about the Legalizations Bill.
Even in the event that the ICC would disagree with his opinion, he said that this disagreement would be based on the principle that every piece of Jewish building in the West Bank is illegal and potentially a war crime, and Amona and the Legalizations Bill are not going to significantly impact the ICC’s conclusions.
In other words, Israel is damned before the ICC with or without Amona and the new bill, and if it needs to diplomatically resist the ICC anyway, it should pass domestic laws based on its own interests, not potential ICC threats.
In contrast, much of the government legal establishment still believes Israel has a strong potential defense to keep the ICC from going after the settlement enterprise.
They would likely point out that there is no historical precedent of the ICC having jurisdiction over building housing, as opposed to genocide. Additional arguments could include state practice in Cyprus and other countries. In addition, they could include gray legal framework regarding the balance of rights of Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank along with High Court decisions which have alternately validated or invalidated certain settlements depending on case-by-case circumstances.
In this view, ignoring Mandelblit’s warning that the Legalizations Bill violates international law would be the ultimate legal coup for the Palestinians against Israel before the ICC. However, following his view would be the ultimate affirmation that Israel’s legal system is independent, impartial and fully-committed to international law.
Mandelblit’s other suggestion, to move Amona to a nearby abandoned property temporarily for eight months would also avoid a new provocation of the ICC.
But all signs indicate that this compromise idea is dead-on-arrival regarding both the Left and the Right.
The truth is that neither the Kontorovich view nor the general government view know for sure how the ICC would react to the Legalizations Bill, or it lack thereof. What is left then is for the Knesset to decide if the Legalizations Bill is important enough to take the gamble.
bernard ross Said:
They get it!! But…
Failed prophetic movements increase their proselytizing efforts to substitute social proof for truth. Once a path is chosen, people tend to keep to it despite all contradictory evidence. After the initial reason for taking that path falls into disrepute, people invent new reasons: the peace process evolved as a means to attain security, but evolved into a quest for justness because the security objective proved unattainable. When it became evidently unjust as Jews lost their holy sites, it became a matter of reaching a consensus with the international community.
When people cannot evaluate the truth, they look for social proof instead of objective truth. The number of adherents to a particular idea and intensity of their beliefs is mistaken for proof. Israel’s population cannot evaluate the intricacies of the peace process, and so the population looks to the peace zealots for a social example. The mass political suicide of an Israeli society that follows the peaceniks is not unlike the Holocaust or Jonestown, where crowds walked to their deaths because imitation was their only behavioral benchmark.
@ yamit82:
I dont get why they dont get it
@ yamit82:
I’d ask you how it happened but then you’d have to type 🙂
get well soon
@ yamit82:
Broke my right shoulder and arm so hard for me to type 😉
@ bernard ross:
https://fb-s-a-a.akamaihd.net/h-ak-xlt1/v/t1.0-9/15230553_10154740342674675_3332881075693454295_n.jpg?oh=ff44f79a4b35105318a2ada0891bb116&oe=58F853F4&__gda__=1492885203_7a7fd95883b67ca442efe80666ec5ef7
@ yamit82:
I wrote you a reply but it disappeared into cyberspace
the summary is that Baker is a complete dunce, I agree with yishai except no votes or citizenry for annexed arabs…. the model can be as that for Jews in saudi arabia The video is five years old and Baker noted that the peace treaty was disintegrating with Morsi but still wanted to have 2 states because he wanted his sons to live in peace with arabs…. delusional…… they only want to kill, deport or make his sons dhimmis.
@ bernard ross:
Watch this:
https://vimeo.com/29645543
So first Mandebilt tells us that Jews living outside their ghetto boundaries in YS “violates” international law and now he is advising Jews that they are criminals for settling outside the ghetto in the land of israel. This shows how pathetically absurd the Jews have become after receiving the gift of a homeland.
The GOI, the high court, the AG should all be convincing and educating the Jews of Israel to fight the anti semitic narrative propaganda they themselves are spreading like judenraats in the europe ghettos…. instead of telling the jews to retreat like shylocks and petty thieves and criminals they should educate them to be proud and stand up and fight these despicable anti semitic narratives that Jews should stay in a european designated ghetto which clearly violates the international legal directive of the mandate. Jews must be lead to claim their rights NOT to retreat back into the ghetto as BB, mandebilt and liberman advise. Are Jews to only die to defend themselves against the muslim hordes when they deign to terrorize….. what did they die for if not the right to settle in their own homeland and to be free of the anti semitic muslim abuse that the GOI facilitates in Israel?
Mandebilt bent on spreading the anti semitic narrative… he appears to have alzeheimers with regard to the mandate law. Why would a jewish gov pursue an agenda which affirms an anti semitic narrative which completely contradicts the mandate law. The state of Israel exists legally ONLY as a result of that prime directive… so why would they ignore the very single major legal cause of their very existence? A lawyer usually argues that basis of law which agrees with his agenda but here we have a gov and a high court who argue the opposite….. they argue the narrative of the anti semites who deny the legal right of Israel to exist as a state. This is like hiring a lawyer and a CEO who completely sabotage your own case… this is like scoring a goal for your opponent.
Why are Israeli Jews so ignorant that they dont ask these questions? If it is illegal for Jews to settle in YS then it cannot be legal for Jews to settle in Tel aviv… the legal basis for the settlement of tel aviv AND the state of Israel rests SOLELY on the prime directive law to immigrate and settle jews in the historic jewish homeland.
Why would I hire a lawyer and elect a government which sabotages my own rights? Israelis cannot keep whining about the anti semitic narratives of the world when their own gov and high court subscribe to those same narratives. If Israeli Jews are so ignorant or complacent about their rights they should not expect others to champion their rights. The global anti semitism, anti zionism is a pure reflection of Israelis… when Israelis stand up and champion their own Jewish rights in the Jewish homeland then perhaps others will see that there is an argument for jews to live outside of their designated ghettos.
If the whole MO and focus of Israeli govs is to convince those who “teach their children that jews are sons of apes and pigs” to make peace with sons of apes and pigs then they should expect the same repetitive,serial and chronic failure which has been repeating itself since the Jews began returning. Israeli Jews must wake up and Israeli politicians must re educate thos citizens to history and their historical and legal rights.
Once more, here is the mantra that the frauds cannot speak:
“JEWISH SETTLEMENT IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA IS LEGAL AND LEGITIMATE”
This is the test for recognizing a Jewish fraud in Israel
here is an example of how that test works to identify frauds:
see how easily one can apply this failproof test to identify who is a fraud pretending to be pro zionist, pro Israel, pro Jewish rights.
whichever leader cannot say those words is a fraud
the usual bogeymen raised by an anti Jewish, anti nationalist, anti zionist gov…. rhetoric cannot substitute for the facts which prove my claim.
There is one law and prime directive which obtains for 100 years in Judea samariia and that law clearly states the obligation to facilitate and encourage the immigration and settlement of world Jewry on ALL that land. Why is it that I never hear Mandebilt talking about that law? Perhaps for the same reason he never spoke of Yaalons crimiinal obstruction of justice at duma and hebron.
Mandebilt is always saying that if you pass the law then the high court cannot extend the date or some other bogeyman which always ends on the same page…. that Jews cannot live outside the euro designated ghetto boundaries of the major blocks. No new settlements outside the ghetto have been approved for Jews but we keep seeing the deceitful ones helping the euros to illegally build muslim homes in C and approving new pal cities in C. All of this drama is pure BS, Jews in Israel must decide if they will live only in their assigned ghetto or in all the historical homeland as mandated in International law… Isnt it time that these fake zionists start citing the PRIME DIRECTIVE LAW GOVERNING THE MANDATE TERRITORY…..
the settlement of Jews was directed and the government and fake high court are collaborators in a global fraud to cheat the jews of their legal and historical rights…..
everything else is pure obfuscatory bull shite and despicable lies.