Senior Palestinian officials have called for the international community to punish Israel over a contentious new law that seeks to retroactively legalise thousands of West Bank Jewish settlement homes built unlawfully on private Palestinian land.

The legislation passed by Israeli MPs late on Monday night comes after a surge in pro-settlement decisions in the weeks since Donald Trump was sworn in as US president.

The law seeks to give legal status even to outposts regarded as illegal by the Israeli courts, and was pushed by Israel’s far right over the initial objections of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vacillated over the issue.

Critics have said the law could drag Israel into a battle at the international criminal court, which is already conducting a preliminary examination of Jewish settlements.

“Nobody can legalise the theft of the Palestinian lands. Building settlements is a crime, building settlements is against all international laws,” the Palestinian tourism and antiquities minister, Rula Ma’ayah, said on Tuesday. “I think it is time now for the international community to act concretely to stop the Israelis from these crimes.”

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said the law was unacceptable and urged the international community to act immediately. “This is an escalation that would only lead to more instability and chaos,” he said.

The Arab League’s chief, Ahmed Aboul Gheit said the law was “a cover for stealing the land and appropriating the property of Palestinians”.

Nickolay Mladenov, the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, said a very dangerous precedent had been set and “a very thick line” crossed. His worries were echoed by the UK’s Middle East minister, Tobias Ellwood, who said the law, which is almost certain to be challenged in Israel’s courts, threatened the viability of the two-state solution and damaged Israel’s standing with its international partners.

The Trump administration has said it will withhold comment “until the relevant [Israeli] court ruling”.

Human rights groups suggested the message was that Israel had no intention of ending the occupation.

“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,” Human Rights Watch said.

That impression was reinforced during the Knesset debate on the bill when Israeli rightwingers pushed their claim on occupied Palestinian territories as belonging to a biblical land of Israel – and to Jews – by right.

The science and technology minister, Ofir Akunis, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, insisted “on the connection between the Jewish people and its land”, adding: “This whole land is ours. All of it.”

The international community has long regarded all Jewish settlements as illegal, a view reinforced by December’s US-enabled UN security council resolution. But experts point out that the new law goes a significant step further even than Israel’s 50-year military occupation.

Crucially, Israeli MPs have voted for legislation whose principal impact will be on Palestinian landowners who have no say in electing those MPs, and to whom the wider Israeli political system is in no way democratically accountable.

Dan Meridor, a former Likud minister, opposed the law for exactly this reason. Writing in Haaretz before the bill’s passage through parliament, he warned: “The Knesset was elected by Israelis and legislates for them. The Arabs of [the occupied Palestinian territories] did not vote for the Knesset, and it has no authority to legislate for them.

“These are basic principles of democracy and Israeli law. As a rule, elected officials legislate for their constituents and those within the area of their jurisdiction, not others.”

Netanyahu had voiced misgivings about the law in the lead-up to the vote, reportedly expressing concern that it could trigger international censure and saying he wanted to coordinate with the Trump administration before moving ahead on a vote.



Israel’s far-right Jewish Home party has been pushing for the imposition of Israeli law in Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and there have been calls for the formal annexation of the settlement block of Ma’ale Adumim as well as other parts of the West Bank.

Underlining that point on Tuesday, the education minister and Jewish Home leader, Naftali Bennett, told Israel’s Army Radio that the goal of the legislation was to create the same conditions in the settlements as in Israel proper.

“At the end of the day, behind all the talk there is a simple question: what do we want for the future of Israel?” he said.

