On Thursday, The Israeli Supreme Court approved the construction of two residential buildings containing 31 colonialist units in the Hizqia illegal colony in the Old City of Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.
After rejecting an appeal filed by the Israeli peace Now Movement, the court made its ruling and granted a green light for the construction of the illegal colony.
Israeli sources said the approval of the new units is part of a larger plan aiming to construct more than sixty units for the colonizers in the same area, which served as a wholesale market.
The plan was approved several years ago but was shelved; however, the Israeli Supreme Court’s ruling paves the way for its implementation on the stolen Palestinian lands.
It is worth mentioning that the market of twenty-five shops was closed by Israel in the year 1994 after the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre.
The shops are all owned by the Hebron Municipality, and the Palestinian were renting them from it.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
