An Israeli government-appointed committee has found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is not occupation at all. The panel says that the West Bank has been occupied for so long that it is just de facto Israeli territory now.

The so-called Levy committee, headed by former judge Edmond Levy and appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has recommended a fundamental change in Israeli policies in the West Bank, including the annulment of laws, court rulings and procedures in order to permit Jews to settle in all of the occupied territory.

The committee also wants the Israeli government to “legalise” all settlements inside the West Bank.

In order to support its recommendations, the committee says that it rejected the position that the West Bank, which Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 war, is an occupied territory under international law.

The panel argues that the generally accepted concept of occupation relates to short periods in which territory is captured from a sovereign state until the dispute between the two sides is resolved. But, it says, the West Bank has been under Israeli control for decades, and it is impossible to foresee a time when Israel will relinquish these territories, if ever.

In public comments, the US State Department has rejected the committee’s recommendation.

State Department Spokesman Patrick Ventrell said: “The US position on settlements is clear.

“Obviously, we’ve seen the reports that an Israeli government appointed panel has recommended legalising dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity and we oppose any effort to legalise settlement outposts...We’re concerned about it, obviously.”

It is also clear that the US government does not want to go deep into the subject since the panel’s recommendations, if implemented, will seal the coffin of the two-state solution and usher in the one-state solution that Israel has always dreaded.

If Israeli treats the West Bank as part of its territory, then there is no basis for treating the Palestinians living in the West Bank any different from Arab Israelis. They would be citizens, even if initially second-class citizens, and would have voting rights just like Arab Israelis elsewhere do.

Effectively, this means turning 2.5 million Palestinians into voters and making Arabs over 40 per cent of Israel’s population, and a growing group that would become a majority within a matter of years and signal the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy.

That is definitely not what Jewish Israelis want. They want the land, but not the people.

Netanyahu is unlikely to implement the Levy panel’s recommendation, except perhaps those related to the “legal” status of the settlements.

Overlooked in the entire argument is how an occupation force could decide whether the occupied territory is occupied or not. Of course, Israel is known to live by its own laws under the protection of the US and its allies. However, Israel’s patrons need to tell the Jewish state sooner or later it would be held accountable for invading and occupying other’s territory through the use of military force and then deciding for itself that it has the right to do with the occupied territory.