The bill had been tabled in 2013 after widespread international condemnation of the forced transfer plan. According to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
Israeli authorities had initially approved the plan, known as the ‘Prawer Plan’, in 2011, but delayed it indefinitely after the UN and other international bodies condemned the plan.
The Palestinian Bedouin communities of southern Israel have lived in their homes for hundreds of years, but when Israel was created in 1948, the Israeli government refused to recognize their villages. As such, their homes have been destroyed dozens of times by the Israeli government, each time rebuilt by the Bedouin community.