If Israel's government implements the Levy report, wrote Israeli international law professor David Kretzmer in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, it "will have to acknowledge that apartheid is living and kicking" in Greater Israel, or else "it will have to extend political rights to all Palestinian residents of the West Bank."
The Levy committee, chaired by former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, was set up by Netanyahu to try to find a way to "legalize" Jewish settlements established on the West Bank without formal government approval. Israeli courts have demanded that some of these outposts be dismantled, including many erected on private Palestinian land. Successive Israeli governments have pledged that they would do so. But nearly all the illegal outposts remain.
Senior Israeli government officials have tacitly aided the settlers in their illegal building efforts, and Netanyahu was eager to find a justification to avoid demolishing the outposts. So he stacked the Levy panel with staunch right-wingers who were strong supporters of the settlers.
The result: The Levy report rejects the very idea that Israel is "occupying" the West Bank. It proposes that Jews be permitted to settle almost anywhere in the West Bank, with minimal restrictions. And it insists that all Jewish settlements are legal, even those ruled illegal by four decades of Israeli Supreme Court rulings. "The Levy commission condones lawbreaking," says Princeton professor Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.
The settlers don't care. But they, and the Netanyahu government, should be wary of getting what they wish for: If the Levy report's recommendations are adopted, the consequences could lead to the end of the Jewish state.
Why? Two reasons.
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