Among the Democratic dissenters were declared presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California.

The White House is not interested in being considered an “honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a senior US official said this week, rejecting the notion that some sort of “equivalency” between the two sides was required to successfully mediate a peace deal.

In hundreds of rulings and decisions handed down over the years on the demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, the justices have regarded Israeli planning policy as lawful and legitimate, nearly always focusing only on the technical issue of whether the petitioners had building permits.

[FMEP grantee] Yesh Din petitioned the High Court of Justice to halt the legalization of the Adei Ad outpost in the West Bank. It turned to the court in the aftermath of a violent incident on January 26 that involved the Adei Ad security team, during which 38-year-old Hamdi Taleb Na’san, a Palestinian father of four, was killed on the edge of his village of al-Mughayir. The IDF has alleged that he was killed by a settler.

The firepower, scale of destruction, and numbers of Palestinians killed during Operation Cast Lead were unprecedented in the brutal history of the conflict. Since then, the tactics used have become part of the IDF’s arsenal in its wars on Gaza.

The latest data shows the population in Jewish settlements of the West Bank grew to 449,508 as of Jan. 1, up 3.3 percent from 435,159 people a year earlier. In comparison, Israel’s overall population grew 1.9 percent last year to 8.907 million people, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The reason to revisit the decision, Israeli Attorney General Mendelblit said, is that a member of the CHE’s planning and budgeting subcommittee, Dr. Rivka Wadmany Shauman, apparently acted despite a conflict of interest by voting in favor of the move just as the university was discussing her promotion to professor.

Benjamin Netanyahu will continue to lead the Likud Party, and he will be followed on his party’s list for the upcoming elections by four lawmakers that he has clashed with in recent months.