Four newspapers papers discuss retired Supreme Court Judge Edmund Levy’s report on the legal status of settlement outposts in Judea and Samaria

The Jerusalem Post welcomes the report, which it believes defines the legal status of Judea and Samaria, and states that “Far from ‘occupied,’ the status of Judea and Samaria – if one is being generous with regard to Palestinian demands – can at best be described as sui generis.” The editor notes that while the committee “might not succeed in convincing Israel’s detractors that settlements are legal and the men, women and children who populate them are law-abiding citizens by any criterion,” he nevertheless feels that “the plain truth has now been reiterated – for the record. And it should be officially recognized as such by the government.”

Haaretz comments that the report effectively annexes the territories conquered in the Six-Day War to the State of Israel by recommending that all Israeli outposts be sanctioned, and asserts: “Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, who opposed the creation of Levy’s committee, has a responsibility to explain to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the profound international law implications of adopting the report’s recommendations. Netanyahu must shelve the report and insist that the executive branch of his government enforce, without delay, the judicial orders regarding all of the outposts, starting with those built on private land.”

Yisrael Hayom says, „Whoever told Talia Sason, a former Meretz Knesset candidate, to write a report on outposts in Judea and Samaria, invited in advance a recommendation to wipe them off the face of the earth; and whoever later told a committee headed by Edmund Levy to summarize the settlements issue, invited in advance a recommendation to wipe the Sason report off the face of the earth.” The author suggests that „both the Right and the extreme Left would like to see the Government adopt the Levy committee report,” and adds: „If Israel was to stop defining itself as bound by various international treaties and the rule of law, global pressure on it would increase to unprecedented dimensions. The Right wouldn’t care. The Left yearns for outside pressure.”

Yediot Aharonot also notes that the Levy committee report contravenes the Sason report and asserts that „Legal analysis is not an exact science. It is possible to err and to think again. And wonder of wonders, there is no absolute legal truth even when it comes to the territories over the Green Line.” The author wonders how Israel’s critics would explain „that the rule of law requires warmly adopting Talia Sason’s report on the one hand while ignoring Levy’s on the other.”

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Ma’ariv comments on the culture of political protest in Israel and says, „The Right in Israel challenges the state much more than the Left. Its extremists clash with the army and the police in a way that no ‘anarchist’ – a creature that simply does not exist here – would dare to do.”