Some three months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Levy, now retired, to head a committee charged with examining land ownership and construction in the West Bank.
Levy’s findings, which some feel could threaten the integrity and authority of the attorney general as the sole provider of legal directions to the government, and which others view as a potentially long overdue balm to institutional bias, are due to be delivered in the coming days.
In two recent High Court of Justice cases, both indicative of a more pervasive issue across the West Bank, the state, as represented by the State Attorney’s Office and the attorney general, conceded that settlement neighborhoods, on land claimed by Palestinians, were indeed built on private land and therefore had to be dismantled. The court did not investigate the land claims, which related to the Migron outpost and the Ulpana neighborhood in the settlement of Beit El. The judges merely accepted the state’s position and set firm and final dates for demolition (of Migron by August 1 and of the Ulpana neighborhood by July 1). More
