Will Israel impose Cypriot model in West Bank?
Israel is considering adopting methods that Cyprus used in land disputes to regulate settlements in the West Bank, which has raised the ire of Palestinians.
There has been increasing talk in Israel since October about the illegal outpost of Amona, near the city of Ramallah in center of the West Bank, as Israeli right-wing parties threatened Nov. 29 to withdraw from the government should the outpost be ordered evacuated, based on the Nov. 14 Israeli Supreme Court decision. The Amona outpost is illegal as it is built on private Palestinian lands.
Israeli writer Ariel Kahana said in a Nov. 23 article on NRG that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held meetings back in October with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to discuss the possibility to set up a land arbitration system in line with the so-called Cypriot model.
Cyprus, whose area amounts to 9,000 square kilometers (3,474 square miles), has been a disputed land between the Turks and Greeks since 1974. Back then, Greece launched an offensive on the island to annex it to its territories, which prompted the Turks to intervene militarily to protect the Turkish Cypriots. The island has been divided ever since into two parts, a northern half with a majority of Turks and a southern half with a Greek majority.
Kahana added in his article that Netanyahu has taken several steps to look into a realistic application of the Cypriot model on the Palestinian territories, as he has met with a number of international judges and formed a legal crew to find common denominators between the Cypriot model and the West Bank.
