A/HRC/20/32 residents or their buildings, including mosques, in their own towns or villages, and identifying those attacks as the ―price tag‖ for actions taken by the IDF and the Government of Israel against the outposts. 28. In a recent development, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a judgment requiring the structure on the Migron outpost to be removed by 1 August 2012, thus rejecting the request of the State of Israel to postpone the dismantling of this large and controversial outpost until November 2015. Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the Government of Israel operates in accordance with Israeli law, past experience suggests that Israeli authorities back off in the face of settler resistance, which has already been threatened in relation to dismantling Migron. It should be noted that several years ago, Israeli authorities pledged, at the urging of the Quartet, to remove two dozen outposts established after 2001 as a confidence-building gesture in relation to the push for negotiations by those insisting that the Road Map is the only path leading to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, but has never done anything to carry out the pledge. 18 29. Israeli law has up to now viewed the outposts as illegal because they are on private Palestinian land, but this is changing. On 24 April 2012, the Government of Israel purported to ―legalize‖ three of the older outposts—Bruchin, Roehelin, and Sansana—in what appears to be a trend towards abandoning its formal distinction between legal and illegal settlements. In practice Israel has consistently used its soldiers to protect outpost settlers and has connected the outposts to electricity grids, which signifies a normalization of their existence. If all outposts are taken into account, it is estimated that there are more than 100 spread throughout the West Bank, in addition to the 120 official settlements. B. Settler violence 30. The settlements are unlawful, and impede Palestinian hopes for a sustainable peace based on the withdrawal by Israel from the lines that were outlined in Security Council resolution 242 (1967), adopted unanimously in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war. These settlements have been the cause of serious secondary harm to Palestinians living under occupation. The most obvious harm is associated with the appropriation of land for the construction of settler-only roads linking settlements to each other and to pre-1967 Israel. Equally harmful is the surge of settler violence directed against Palestinian persons and property, which creates a continuing atmosphere of violence and insecurity, if not terror, in several regions of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Hebron and its surroundings seem particularly afflicted by frequent incidents of settler violence and reports of constant high tensions between Israeli settlers and the indigenous population, including young schoolchildren who are often threatened or even assaulted by Israeli settlers on their way to school. What is also troubling is the tendency of the Israeli military forces to protect the settlers during their violent rampages, and to fail to investigate and apprehend Israeli settlers responsible for violent assault and destruction of property. The latest statistics reinforce this unfortunate reality associated with the continuation of prolonged occupation, and are a dramatic example of the consequences of that occupation on Palestinians living for decades in a setting of rightlessness, disempowerment and vulnerability due to the lack of the protection of the rule of law. 18 See Security Council resolution 1515 (2003), in which the Council endorsed the Quartet Performance-based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. 13