Forty-two percent of the West Bank is governed by settlement councils, Israeli rights organization B'Tselem revealed in a new settlements study, published Tuesday.

Released as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to meet with US President Barack Obama in Washington, the report By Hook and by Crook: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank, uses government reports, Civil Administration maps and military documents to compile a picture of "the mechanisms used to gain Israeli control of land in the West Bank."

The publication came out one day after the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran a report saying settlers were poised to build some 2,700 settlement units as soon as the 10-month partial settlement freeze on some West Bank settlements comes to an end at the close of September.

By cross-referencing Civil Administration data with 2009 aerial photos of settlements, B'Tselem said it found that a full 21% of the built-up areas of settlements are built on private Palestinian lands, recognized by the state as such.

"In taking over all of these lands, the settlement enterprise has, since its inception, treated international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law in an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal manner," a statement from the report writers said, adding that the report proved false claims that Israel was only building on "state land" in the West Bank.

The report counted 300,000 setters living in 121 settlements and about 100 outposts in the West Bank, and another 200,000 living in Jerusalem settlements, illegally annexed to Israel in the 1970s.

Dispelling myths about settlements

The B'Tselem report addressed several arguments made by the state of Israel and settlement supporters, using data to debunk the idea that settlements grew only to accommodate natural growth - citing a 20% increase of settler population despite a negative growth rate for Israel over the year - and illustrating several "benefits and incentives Israel provides to encourage Israelis to move to the settlements."

Underscoring an earlier problematic declaration of a settlement construction freeze, the report found that between 2004, when Israel said a freeze would be undertaken as part of the Road Map implementation, to 2009, the settler population grew by 28% not including growth in East Jerusalem.

The report further questioned the placement of settlements, saying allocation of 66% of settlements as "state land" was "only possible through a manipulative interpretation of all relevant laws in force in the West Bank."

B'Tselem numbers showed 900,000 dunams of land - 16% of the West Bank - was declared state land for the purpose of settlement construction, and explained that Israeli government interpretations of Ottoman Land Law, used to declare the area under the jurisdiction of the state, "contradicted explicit statutory provisions and judgments of the Mandatory Supreme Court."

According to the rights group, "[w]ithout this distorted interpretation, Israel would not have been able to allocate such extensive areas of land for the settlements."

Call for evacuation

Based on the findings of its latest report, lawyers and rights workers with B'Tselem called for the "Israeli government [to] evacuate all the settlements, in a manner that respects the settlers’ human rights, including the payment of compensation."

The group said the settlements were an infringement of Palestinians’ human rights and a violation of international law, and suggested that until settlements can be evacuated, interim measures should be taken, including a "real freeze on new and planned construction," an end to land seizures, and cancellation of the benefits and incentives to encourage migration to the settlements.