A/HRC/20/32 parties‖. If the responsibility to protect is to attain legitimacy as an application of international law, it must be applicable everywhere, in particular the situation of prolonged occupation that prevails in the occupied Palestinian territory. Otherwise, the responsibility to protect will be discredited due to selective application. IV. Settlement expansion 24. Settlement expansion has accelerated in the course of the last several months. At least 3,500 units were under construction in 2011, and 1,850 buildings were being built for housing units. This does not include Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem. A. Settlement outposts 25. The most significant development bearing on settlement expansion, and of primary importance to the Israeli settlement project overall, is reflected in a series of moves by the Government of Israel that purport to ―legalize‖ 100 or so settler ―outposts‖. They had been previously regarded as illegal even under Israeli law because they were not constructed on Government-held land in Area C. In this area, approximately 450,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements held to be ―legal‖ under Israeli law while remaining, as are all settlements, illegal under international humanitarian law, under the Fourth Geneva Convention (art. 49, sixth paragraph). 26. The Ministry of Justice has established a committee for examining private lands in Judea and Samaria, headed by a former Israeli Supreme Court Chief Justice, Edmond Levy, who spoke out publicly against removing Israeli settlers from Gaza. The Committee also includes in its membership Alan Baker, 17 a prominent international lawyer and former Government official who previously authored a ―legal opinion‖ that found that the settlement outposts should be legalized under Israeli law provided only that Palestinian owners of the land were paid compensation and that the settlement was established in good faith. Given the geographic dispersion of the settlements throughout the West Bank, if the purported legalization takes place as expected, it would make clear beyond any reasonable doubt that a viable and independent Palestinian State will not be established. It would bring to finality the seemingly endless assertions that settlement expansion ―is making‖ or ―might make‖ a two-State solution impossible, and force recognition that the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements has already made the creation of a viable, contiguous Palestinian State, and thus a just, lasting and comprehensive ―two-State solution,‖ impossible. 27. Plans exist to convert outposts, usually consisting of temporary house trailers strung together, into settlements consisting of several hundred housing units. If this dynamic of legalization, which has so far mainly flown below the radar of international public perception, is formalized, it is likely to be viewed as a major provocation by Palestinians. It should be noted that in the past several months, the attempts by Israel to enforce its own law regarding these outposts, most prominently the Migron outpost, have perversely generated retaliatory violence against Palestinian persons and property by Israeli settlers, known as ―price tag‖ reprisals. This insulting term refers to the practice of Israeli settlers burning Palestinian olive groves, destroying agricultural land, or attacking Palestinian 17 12 Tovah Lazaroff, ―Netanyahu names c’tee to examine outpost issue‖, Jerusalem Post, 30 January 2012. Available from www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=255784 The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, ―Attempting to Distinguish Settlements from Outposts Creates a False Distinction,‖ 30 April 2012 www.acri.org.il/en/2012/04/22/attempting-to-distinguishsettlements-from-outposts-creates-a-false-distinction/