Palestine’s vice-president calls plan ‘flagrant violation of international law’ and a step towards full Israeli annexation
Israel’s defence minister wants to transfer law enforcement powers for Israelis in the occupied West Bank over to the police, a plan that Palestine’s vice-president described as a “flagrant violation of international law” and step towards full Israeli annexation.
Israel Katz announced that he had ordered the military to draw up plans for the handover of responsibility for policing Israeli settlers amid domestic and international criticism of the army’s failure to tackle militants besieging three Palestinian families.
The Palestinian vice-president, Hussein al-Sheikh, called for international intervention to enforce international law and stop a move that would “entrench the illegitimate annexation of Palestinian land”.
Katz unveiled his plan as a settler siege in the Palestinian village of Qusra entered its sixth day. The Israeli army has proved unable or unwilling to remove the group of militants trying drive out Palestinian residents through a campaign of terror.
Leading Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard said a transfer of law enforcement powers could constitute a major step towards formal annexation.
“The military can delegate enforcement but not responsibility (of the law),” Sfard said. “If they want to create a normative legal framework that absolves the army from responsibility and transfers it to police, that would be another brick, a very major one, of annexation.”
However, Israel could also legally expand police powers in the occupied West Bank under the current occupation framework, he added, and the lack of detail in Katz’s statement indicated it may have been driven more by politics than clear policy.
“This is a cowardly statement made by a minister of defence who is under scrutiny, because the army that reached Syria, Iran and Lebanon and annihilated Gaza cannot evacuate a few Jewish terrorists that invaded a Palestinian home in an area under occupation for six decades.”
There has been a surge in attacks on Palestinians and construction of new settlements across the occupied West Bank, as extremists backed by the most far-right government in Israel’s history intensify a campaign of ethnic cleansing ahead of national elections set for October.
On Thursday Katz celebrated the re-establishment of a settlement evacuated by Israel in 2005, under then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan.
“Here, this is the land of Israel. Here, we are staying forever,” Katz said at the ceremony in Ganim, where two dozen prefabricated homes have already been installed, and the hillside is being levelled to make space for more.
On the road that leads to the settlement the army had levelled Palestinian property and used piles of rubble were used to block access roads for Palestinian communities.
On Friday the commander of Israeli forces for the occupied West Bank, Gen Avi Bluth, made a second visit to Qusra. Two days earlier he told Palestinians the army would remove the settlers, but soldiers retreated from confrontation with the group.
Instead they forced one of the Palestinian families out of their home, saying they needed it as a base for the unsuccessful military operation against the settlers.
