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The proof is in....if it was ever needed!

That the Israeli government has allowed the building of settlements unabated is almost beyond question.

Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem has now documented that one of the settlements is not only illegal according to international law, but actually built on land to which Palestinians have title.

"In March 2005, the government of Israel adopted the opinion it had commissioned from Attorney Talia Sasson, former head of the Special Tasks Department in the State Attorney's Office, regarding unauthorized outposts. In doing so, it set, for the first time, detailed criteria for examining the legality of Israeli communities in the West Bank according to local law.

All the settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international humanitarian law, whether or not they are officially recognized by the Israeli government. The various governments of Israel ignored this prohibition and established more than 130 recognized settlements throughout the West Bank and on the territory it annexed to Jerusalem. The population of these settlements is now almost one-half million persons. Unlike previous reports, in this report B’Tselem examines whether Israel has, at the very least, met its declared commitment to respect the local law.

According to the Sasson report, to be legal under local law, an Israeli settlement must meet each of the following four criteria:

the Israeli government issued a decision to establish the settlement;
the settlement has a defined jurisdictional area;
the settlement has a detailed, approved outline plan;

the settlement lies on state land or on land that was purchased by Israelis and registered under their name in the Land Registry.
According to B'Tselem’s research, Ofra meets only the first of these conditions: in 1979, four years after its establishment, the government declared it an official community. However, no jurisdictional area has ever been defined for Ofra, no detailed outline plan has been approved for the settlement, and no lawful building permits were ever issued for it. Thus, the entire community of Ofra, with its hundreds of residential units, was built unlawfully.

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