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Israel asks for delay in West Bank outpost evacuation

Xinhua, November 1, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Israeli government on Monday asked the country's Supreme Court to postpone a court-ordered evacuation of an unauthorized Jewish outpost in the West Bank.

In its request, the state asked the court to extend the deadline for the evacuation of the Amona outpost in seven months.

In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that Amona was illegally built on private Palestinian land and must be demolished by Dec. 25, 2016.

Pro-settler lawmakers in the right-wing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been pressing hard to find a legal loophole that will retroactively legalize the outpost.

However, Israel's attorney general said such a move would be unconstitutional.

The new request was condemned by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group which represents the Palestinian landowners who petitioned the High Court in order to evacuate Amona. "The request for a deferral is an insult to the rule of law," a spokesperson for the group said in a statement.

The group called on the court to enforce the law and "return the lands in question to its rightful owners, residents of the Palestinian communities of Silwad, Taybeh and Ein Yabrud."

Amona, located east of the city of Ramallah, is the largest among the so-called "illegal outposts," communities built by far-right Israelis without permits from the government.

There are about 100 unauthorized outposts and 120 settlements that Israel considered as legal.

Both outposts and settlements are illegal under international law as they were built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. Endit