B'Tselem position paper: The Annexation That Was and Still Is, October 2020

The laws of occupation also stipulate that the residents of the occupied territory from before the occupation are a protected population, which the occupier must protect and enable to continue living as before. [...] The settlements, which violate the aforesaid prohibition in international law on transferring the population of the occupier to the occupied territory, also violate the prohibition on making permanent changes in this territory. [...] The ruling removed the last obstacle to the state’s plan, and the state has since held the position that there is no legal impediment to removing the community from its home. [...] When the state asked to defer the hearing to “the end of the first quarter of 2021,” Justice Sohlberg called the motion “embarrassing”, noting that state counsel had previously insisted that the removal of the community was a “pressing, perhaps even urgent” matter, yet “two years on, nothing has changed.” Justice Sohlberg called on the state to “uphold the statements it makes and allow reliance on. [...] For instance, Israel argues that the settlements are legal because international law does not prohibit voluntary relocation of the occupiers’ citizens to the occupied territory – overlooking the state’s huge investment in building the settlements and their service infrastructure, and in settling hundreds of thousands of people in them.