An Israeli outpost in occupied East Jerusalem (Shutterstock)

On Sunday the Israeli cabinet unanimously passed a bill that would legalize settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank that were built on privately owned Palestinian land. If passed by the Knesset, the law could potentially be used to raise the status of many outposts all over the West Bank to those of settlements that are legal under Israeli law (all settlements beyond the Green Line are illegal according to international law). That would be a tremendous setback to the already dimming prospects of an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, and to the two-state solution.

The Obama Administration made clear its opposition to the bill. “This would represent an unprecedented and troubling step that’s inconsistent with prior Israeli legal opinion and also break long-standing policy of not building on private Palestinian land,” State Department Spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said. “We hope it doesn’t become law.”

What is the “formalization law”?

The bill in question is referred to colloquially as the “formalization law.” It would allow the Israeli government to retroactively legalize outposts built in the West Bank if the outpost was set up on privately owned Palestinian land with government involvement, but was not an officially sanctioned settlement. Palestinian owners would not be able to retrieve their land, but would be entitled to financial compensation at a value determined by the Israeli government.

How does this change the status quo?

Israel has retroactively legalized specific outposts many times in the past. This law, however, would allow the Israeli government to retroactively legalize an outpost quickly, preventing the Israeli judicial system from compelling the state to dismantle the outpost. While this law is not solely a response to the current dispute over the Amona outpost, that dispute has accelerated the motion on this bill.

What are the specific problems with the bill?

Israeli Attorney General, Avichai Mendelblit, stated that the bill is inconsistent with Israel’s rule of law, violates international law, and seeks to undermine the status of the High Court of Israel. It is an attempt to legalize a procedure that also violates Israeli jurisprudence and precedent since the beginning of the occupation that has agreed that the State cannot simply confiscate privately owned Palestinian land for settlements. Forcing landowners to accept a payment in exchange does not mitigate this, as the Court has repeatedly confirmed.

What is the status of the bill now?

The approval of the bill by the ministerial committee means that it will come to the Knesset floor for readings, debates and, eventually, votes. It must pass three readings in the Knesset to become law.

Is the bill controversial, or will it pass easily?

The bill is being pushed hard by the religious nationalist Jewish Home Party and its leading ministers, Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked (ironically, Shaked, the Minister of Justice, is opposed in this effort by the people in her own ministry, who agree with the Attorney General). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to recognize that the bill is going to damage Israel in the international community and could provoke action from the outgoing Obama administration. Still, he has yielded to pressure from the settler movement and approved the bill along with the rest of the ministers who voted to bring the bill to the Knesset. Netanyahu objected mostly to the timing, hoping he could delay both this bill and the High Court’s decision on the Amona outpost until after President Obama left office, but he failed on both counts.

There is no doubt that the opposition, led by the Yesh Atid and Zionist Union parties will oppose this bill. Much will depend on whether lawmakers from Likud and other center-right parties join them. The fact that the Attorney General opposes the bill is very important, and may very swell sway enough Knesset members to oppose it. But with both Bennett and Netanyahu, as well as, quite likely, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman supporting the bill, political pressure on coalition MKs will be intense. One faction, the Kulanu party which is part of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, had been opposed to the bill, but relented under pressure from Netanyahu, who did not wish to see his coalition fracture over this issue.

The bill has now passed its first reading in the Knesset. Two more readings are required for the bill to become law. The bill is not being submitted for a second reading yet. There is time for friends of Israel to try to convince the Prime Minister and the rest of his cabinet not to move forward with this bill. But the Jewish Home faction is sure to press for the bill to move forward, so the time to act is now.

Professor Brent Sasley is an Associate Professor and Graduate Advisor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. He studies and teaches the politics of the Middle East and of Israel; the nature of identity formation; and decision-making processes. He is the author of The Cold War in the Middle East, 1950-1991. FMEP asked for his views on some of the current issues concerning Israeli and American policy.

Israel finally has its new governing coalition. The idea that the Zionist Union might join in a national unity government appears to be simmering, and while Benjamin Netanyahu might try to coax them in, for now Israel is going to have a right wing/religious coalition, with the center-right Kulanu representing the only moderate party. Given Netanyahu’s statements in the election regarding the two-state solution and the apparent absence of the Palestinian issue in both the election and the coalition talks, do you see any alternative for Mahmoud Abbas other than continuing to try to internationalize the issue, at the UN, the ICC and perhaps in Europe?

The narrow coalition does indeed appear to be comprised almost entirely of rightist and religious parties, with Kulanu representing the soft right. Moshe Kahlon’s interests in economic issues means his party is unlikely to pay much attention to settlement building or policy toward the West Bank and peace process. He might serve as a brake on some of Bayit Yehudi’s and Likud’s excesses, but otherwise his silence will serve to facilitate the continuation of the last two governments’ policies.

While Abbas’s own intransigence and fear of finally ending the conflict certainly plays a role in the failure of previous talks, the notion that the PA or Abbas have to do more to show interest in progress, and that if only they had, then Israel would have moved forward with the necessary concessions and agreements, is nonsense. An international legal effort (what some have called “lawfare”) to achieve statehood is not without precedent, including by the Zionist movement.

So if I’m Mahmoud Abbas, I don’t see much hope not only for serious talks, but for serious confidence-building measures such as curbing settlement activity outside the main blocs, ending the harsh rhetoric coming from Israel’s leaders, and distinguishing between Fatah/the PA and Hamas. It makes sense, then, for Abbas to continue working on the effort to change the international legal-diplomatic balance.

Let’s assume for the moment that the P5+1 and Iran do indeed conclude a deal similar to the one the White House described in the framework agreement. While lifting sanctions will give Iran the opportunity to expand its regional influence, a deal and an end of sanctions will also give the Americans, the Saudis and the other Arab states near the Gulf the opportunity to engage Iran and possibly open dialogue to help the whole Middle East start to climb back from the turmoil that has engulfed it in recent years. How do you view a post-nuclear-standoff future in the region and how do you think Israel might respond if there is increased dialogue with Iran?

It is difficult to say what the regional effects and what Israel’s reaction will be, because the success and aftermath of the agreement are both contingent on several other factors. I do not share the optimism that an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program will generate greater cooperation between Iran and the United States or will reduce Iranian ambitions in the Middle East. The Iranian regime’s survival is partly dependent on maintaining its commitment to the revolution. Yet legitimacy based on revolutionary impulses requires that one always strive to enhance or expand that revolution. Normalization of Iran in the region would undermine those impulses, and thus serves as a threat to the regime.

For its part, Israel very much fears Iranian normalization, but I think the fear is overstated, as I mentioned. It’s likely there will be efforts to maintain and expand dialogue between Washington and Tehran, and perhaps other regional states as well. This would be a direct threat to Israel’s position in the region, which in recent years has benefitted from the Sunni Arab states’ competition with and hostility toward Iran. Jerusalem would benefit greatly from getting ahead of the possibility of growing Iranian integration, however unlikely. It can do so by making serious efforts to reduce its presence in the West Bank, and respond constructively to the Arab Peace Initiative, which remains on the table.

Finally, given your responses to the first two questions, and given not only the current tense atmosphere between Obama and Netanyahu but also the new partisan divide over Israel (which AIPAC is desperately trying to reverse while groups like the RJC are working hard to expand it), how do you see the future of US-Israel relations going? We know security cooperation will be unaffected, but what about the “special relationship,” the cover the US gives Israel in the international arena, and other such aspects? In particular, I’d like to know how you see this going in the event of a new Clinton White House.

I’ve long argued that the relationship is far stronger than it seems on the basis of personal tensions between Obama and Netanyahu. These personal problems make the big policy discussions harder, but the relationship is rooted in a variety of other factors—strategic cooperation, shared cultural identity, similar political systems, public sympathy—that have and will overcome the individual-level problems because they are so routinized.

That said, it’s clear that the U.S. and Israel have increasingly divergent perceptions about international politics and put emphasis on different priorities. The settlement enterprise has expanded over time, across all Israeli governments. Netanyahu might have increased building in more isolated areas, but he’s still only the latest representation of a decades-long process. Yet settlements are increasingly problematic for Western publics and countries, including the United States. Similarly, Israel continues to hold a regional perspective on the Iranian nuclear program, the Arab uprisings, conventional threats to the Jewish state, and so on, while the United States has been trying to shift its attention to other issues by adopting a more global perspective.

In both cases, while the Obama Administration has certainly pushed harder for such changes, it seems that American foreign policy has been slowly moving in this direction anyway, partly pushed by external systemic forces. This is not to say that Washington will turn away from the Middle East—even Barack Obama couldn’t, as much as he tried. But if the White House’s attention is further diffused across the globe, Israel’s regional concerns will matter less.

It’s hard to know what a Hillary Clinton White House would do. I suspect the problem of settlements would remain a thorn in the personal relationship with Netanyahu. More broadly, it’s very possible the days of a Democratic president maintaining a Bill Clinton-style closeness with an Israeli leader could well be over. Much also depends on who becomes the next prime minister of Israel, if the current government has only a brief time in office. It’s also possible that this Netanyahu government limps along for a few years, kept in power but also constrained by its domestic political struggles, and therefore doesn’t engage in major policy changes but rather continues along the current path. This will make it harder for Clinton to challenge Netanyahu on the big policy questions.

After Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprising victory in Israel’s national elections in March, he took until the last possible minute to complete the process of forming the government for his fourth term as Israel’s prime minister. For all the time he invested, despite making it just under the wire, Netanyahu ended up with a fragile, ultra-right-wing coalition and more work ahead of him to bring in at least one more party.

The government Netanyahu presented to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was a bare majority of 61 seats out of the 120-seat Knesset. There are no fig leafs in this coalition, no Tzipi Livni or Ehud Barak for Netanyahu to send to talk fruitlessly with the Palestinians. One might think this would make the coalition more stable, since it consists entirely of the right wing. In this, one would be wrong. Read more at LobeLog.