Israeli parliament allows settlers to return to formerly evacuated settlements in occupied West Bank

The Israeli Knesset passed legislation on Tuesday allowing Israelis to enter and stay in four Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank that were evacuated in 2005 as part of the "Gaza Disengagement" plan implemented during the tenure of Ariel Sharon, the then-prime minister. 

Knesset members Yuli Edelstein from the Likud party and Limor Sonn Har Melech from Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power party) sponsored the bill. 

In 2005, former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw Israeli forces and evacuate twenty-five illegal Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. 

Israel maintains the withdrawal was "unilateral" in the interest of "improving Israel's security and international standing in the absence of peace negotiations with the Palestinians." 

Jewish settlers in four illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank were also evicted under the disengagement plan. The former settlements of Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim, and Kadim have been closed military zones since late 2005. 

Dov Weisglass, a senior Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the time, later acknowledged that the plan was a trade-off. Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and a handful of settlements in the West Bank. But, at the same time, it would also declare that there is no peace partner on the Palestinian side and, therefore, not conduct peace negotiations. 

"The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process . . . . Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda . . . . All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress," Weisglass said. 

In 2003, Israel and the Palestinian Authority endorsed a US peace proposal known as "the road map," devised to move Israelis and Palestinians over a period of three years to create a Palestinian state.

Sharon's disengagement plan met considerable opposition from Israeli settlers and the government. 

Benjamin Netanyahu, the finance minister at the time, resigned one week before the disengagement, saying the "withdrawal endangers Israel's security, divides its people and sets the standard of the withdrawal to the 1967 border."  

Eighteen years later, Israel still retains effective military control over the Gaza Strip and its 2.1 million inhabitants. 

Israel's settler movement celebrated after the vote Tuesday annulled part of a law banning them from residing in areas of the occupied West Bank that the Israeli government evacuated in 2005.

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a West Bank settler who has claimed "there isn't a Palestinian people", heralded the parliamentary vote as "historic".

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post ahead of the vote,  United States ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, said that the US opposes the bill. 

"We have been very clear [that] we oppose the bill," Tom Nides said. 

At meetings by officials from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt and the United States in Aqaba in February and Sharm el-Sheikh this month, Israel promised to temporarily halt new settlements plans. 
 
Nabil Abu Rudeine, the spokesman to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the bill's passage and said it runs counter to UN security council resolution 2334.

He also said the Israeli government "insists on challenging international law and the efforts by the international parties to prevent escalation."