Top Israel Law Officer Slams West Bank Impunity

A top Israeli law officer said on Wednesday that a culture of impunity reigns among Israeli bodies operating in the occupied territories, who fail to heed even their own rules.

The report was swiftly seized on by Israeli human rights groups and campaigners against expansion of the settlements as evidence of what they say is an "intolerable situation".

It comes at a diplomatically sensitive time as Israel's key ally the United States makes marathon efforts to kick-start a resumption of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, broken off for three years largely over the settlements issue.

In his annual report, State Comptroller Yosef Shapira took particular issue with the government's handling of Israel's internationally controversial settlements in the territories.

Shapira said that nearly 70 percent of the 120 settlements in the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, had been built on state land without the government demanding any payment.

The policy had cost the Israeli taxpayer millions of dollars (euros), he charged.

He said there had also been a mushrooming of construction in the West Bank without any planning permission, in which Israeli settlers had been at least as guilty as Palestinians, who have faced repeated punitive demolitions.

"There is no authority in Judaea and Samaria that insists on respect for the rule of law," he said, using Israel's term for the West Bank, which it occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Israeli military, which effectively runs the Civil Administration in the West Bank, despite its title, promised to heed the report's findings, although it stressed it had to focus most of its resources on security.

"The main mission of the army is to ensure the safety of residents and the stability of the security situation," a statement said.

"We will, however, draw lessons from this report, so that we can put right past errors."

Anti-settlement group Peace Now said that the report showed that the West Bank had become a "new Wild West".

"The state comptroller's report reveals an intolerable situation, in which settlements receive free land, and are free from law enforcement against illegal construction," it said.

Peace Now warned that if state law officers took no enforcement action in light of the comptroller's report, it would petition the supreme court itself.

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said the report showed once again that "Israel's entire law enforcement system in the West Bank is enslaved to the settlement project".

"The failings detailed are a direct result of the policy of successive Israeli governments, that have avoided for decades enforcing the law on Israeli citizens who harm Palestinians and their property," it added.

"Any allocation of West Bank land to Israeli settlements is illegal and unacceptable -- this regardless of whether the allocation was done based on the criteria set by the Israeli government or not."

Publication of the report came as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held a second day of talks in neighboring Jordan with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as he pressed his sixth mission to the region in as many months.

The Palestinians insist they will not return to direct peace negotiations with Israel until it freezes settlement expansion and accepts the lines that existed before its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the baseline.

The report also comes two days before the European Union publishes new guidelines barring its 28 members from all funding of, or dealings with, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.