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, it was reported that the Government was covertly carrying out the recommendations of the Report.

The three members of the committee are former Israeli Supreme Court justice Edmund Levy, former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker and former deputy president of the Tel Aviv District Court Tchia Shapira. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the "members were meticulously chosen": Levy, who served as deputy mayor of Ramle on behalf of the Likud before being appointed as a Supreme Court judge, was the single minority justice to oppose the 2005 unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, declaring that it violated the rights of the Jewish settlers, Baker who is a resident of the West Bank settlement Har Adar was on the payroll of a settlers' organization which advocates legalization of outposts, and Shapira, the daughter of former Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, is a sister-in-law of right-wing ideologue Israel Harel.

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