Legal Status
Like all Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, Shvut Rachel is considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. The international community considers Israeli settlements to violate the Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition on the transfer of an occupying power's civilian population into occupied territory. Israel disputes that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the Palestinian territories as they had not been legally held by a sovereign prior to Israel taking control of them. This view has been rejected by the International Court of Justice and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Israel itself differentiates between "legal" and "illegal" settlements. Shvut Rachel was illegal by Israeli standards until February 2012. According to Peace Now, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories legalized the outpost by redesignating it as a neighborhood of Shilo.
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“In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this system, individual happiness, etc. depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)