Levy Report

The Levy Report (Hebrew: דו״ח לוי), officially called Report on the Legal Status of Building in Judea and Samaria (Hebrew: דו״ח על מעמד הבניה באזור יהודה ושומרון), is an 89-page report on West Bank settlements published on 9 July 2012, authored by a three-member committee headed by former Israeli Supreme Court justice Edmund Levy. The committee, dubbed the "outpost committee", was appointed by Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late January 2012 to investigate the legal status of unauthorized West Bank Jewish settlements, but also examined whether the Israeli presence in the West Bank is to be considered an occupation or not. The report concludes that Israel's presence in the West Bank is not an occupation, and that the Israeli settlements are legal under international law. It recommends the legalization of unauthorized Jewish settlement outposts by the state, and provides proposals for new guidelines for settlement construction. In May 2014, Haaretz reported that the government was covertly carrying out the recommendations of the Report.