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MARCO WERMAN: Gaza is not yet back on its feet after the three-week war between Israel and Hamas. At the moment, the immediate concern is preserving a fragile ceasefire. The World's Quil Lawrence is in Jerusalem. Quil, President Obama has already sent his envoy, George Mitchell, to the region. Who has he met and what has he been saying?

QUIL LAWRENCE: He's been meeting with a wide range of people -- people in government and also people who are presumed to be the incoming government. Today, he met with Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-winger who is assumed to be the next Prime Minister of Israel when they have elections on February 10th.

WERMAN: And who has he met on the Palestinian side?

LAWRENCE: He met with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah yesterday. Now, much has been made of the fact that Mitchell hasn't in fact gone to Gaza. No American officials have gone to Gaza in recent years, certainly since the Hamas takeover there. And instead, Mitchell went and toured a UN aid warehouse in the West Bank, which was clearly symbolizing the UN effort in Gaza – particularly the fact that a UN warehouse was bombed there with white phosphorous, essentially firebombed, during the Israeli offensive.

WERMAN: Now, the Israeli government has a problem on its hands, beyond with how to deal with Gaza. It concerns a document of its own that's been leaked to an Israeli human rights group. What does the document say, Quil?

LAWRENCE: Well, this is a list, essentially, that was compiled by the Israeli Minister of Defense in 2004. It was essentially a reckoning of all of the Israeli citizens who are in the West Bank, otherwise known as “settlers.” Essentially going through all of them, there might be 285,000 Israeli settlers who are in the West Bank. Under international law, it's illegal for an occupying power to take settlements in the occupied land. But this implies that it's also clearly illegal under Israeli law. And having a list like this leaked from the Defense Department gives a whole lot of ammunition to Israeli human rights activists and Palestinian activists who want to sue the Israeli government. And what will happen with it is that well, this human rights group and others are going to launch a host of lawsuits that will eventually end up in the Israeli Supreme Court. We've seen in the past that sometimes the Israeli Supreme Court will rule in favor of Palestinians who have their private land seized by settlers, and then nothing happens. And speaking today when they released this information, Mikhail Sfard, who is a lawyer with Yish Din, the human rights group that released this information, he made it clear that this might eventually lead to a real showdown in Israel.

MIKHAIL SFARD: Once the court will reach the conclusion that the government is not willing to take action, I think then the Court will be faced with this dilemma, and my belief is the Court will take the path – the legal path.

LAWRENCE: Eventually what we'll see, as he said today, is that if the Israeli Supreme Court ends up ruling against the IDF and no action is taken, Sfard thought there would eventually be a constitutional crisis. Now, I asked him when that might happen, and he was pretty cloudy on that forecast. He didn't know how long that might take, how many lawsuits before the Israeli Supreme Court might say, “We've made these rulings and none of them have been enforced, so something serious has to be done.”

WERMAN: Has there been any comment from the Israeli government on this leaked database?

LAWRENCE: Not yet.
WERMAN: If it's true, what kind of position does this put the international parties to the so-called “roadmap to peace” plan? After all, they have called on Israel to stop building settlements, and they see that as one of the lynchpins to getting back on the road to peace.

LAWRENCE: Well, and that's one of the factors that in some ways makes today's news a huge issue, a shocking indictment, and at the same time not terribly relevant, because its been so many years that so many international organizations have called upon Israel to freeze settlements, and nothing has really changed on the ground. Furthermore, if Benjamin Netanyahu wins the elections as we expect, he's already pledged that he won't remove any settlements. And furthermore, that he won't honor any promises made by the previous Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is going out under a cloud of corruption charges.

WERMAN: The World's Quil Lawrence in Jerusalem. Thank you.

LAWRENCE: Okay. Thank you, Marco.

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