house in Ofra that was destroyed last year
house in Ofra that was destroyed last yearHadas Porush/Flash 90

In an official position of the Defense Ministry that was sent to the Attorney General's office and revealed Thursday evening to News 2, the State seeks to normalize the status of hundreds of homes in the Samaria town of Ofra.

The State seeks to bypass the Regulation Law, which has been frozen by the Supreme Court.

Of the approximately 700 houses in Ofra, one of the first towns established in Judea and Samaria after Jews were allowed to return following the Six Day War, only about 200 had no legal issues. The rest were all constructed either without proper building permits and some were found to have been built on private land.

In an official position paper drafted by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, the ministry stated that "forty years after the establishment of the settlement, the residents have relied in good faith on the State authorities to buy their homes, the private Palestinian land can be expropriated for use in the existing residential neighborhoods of Ofra."

In addition, it was stated that the arrangement would be "with full compensation, if not even more than that, for the Palestinian landowners for this expropriation, as the law allows to do within the State of Israel and as in practice it has been carried out."