Israel's parliament has postponed a vote that would allow it to appropriate hundreds of hectares of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, the parliament's website said yesterday.

The Knesset on Monday began to consider the bill ahead of second and third parliamentary readings due to take place this week. Voting will now take place next week, the Knesset website said, with February 6 the earliest the bill can be passed.

Presented by the pro-settlement lobby, the bill would retroactively legalize nearly 4,000 Jewish homes in the occupied West Bank built in contravention of Israeli law, according to the anti-settlement organization Peace Now. More than 800 hectares of Palestinian land would be expropriated, the organization said. The Palestinian owners of the land would be compensated financially or with land elsewhere.

It would be the first time Israel has applied its own civil law to land it recognizes as Palestinian-owned in the West Bank, critics say. The bill is backed by Israel's right-wing government but has alarmed the international community and supporters of an independent Palestinian state.

The new law would allow settlers to hold on to land if, as stated by the bill, they "innocently" took it - ostensibly without knowing the tracts were owned by Palestinians - or if homes were built there at the state's instruction. Palestinian owners would receive financial compensation from Israel. Supporters say it will enable thousands of settlers to live without fear their homes could be demolished at the order of courts responding to petitions by Palestinians or Israeli anti-settlement organizations. Palestinians see it as a land grab. An Israeli announcement last week of plans for 2,500 more settlement homes in the West Bank caused no discernable waves with the new U.S. administration, whose spokesman responded to by describing Israel as a "huge ally".

The government sought parliamentary approval of the bill despite Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit's description of it as unconstitutional and in breach of international law since it allows the expropriation of private land in territory Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

The homes covered by the legislation are in outposts built deep in the West Bank without Israeli government approval.

The Palestine Liberation Organization has called it a "declaration of war". Israel's opposition leader Isaac Herzog says the law would pose a danger to Israel and could amount to annexation of parts of the West Bank, the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967.

The opposition had initially demanded that debates on the bill be spread out over 38 days, but this period was shortened, the Knesset website said. The delay means the vote could now come in the same week as the February 8 deadline for the evacuation of the "outpost" settlement of Amona. The fate of Amona, which an Israeli court demanded be demolished as it is built on private Palestinian land, was one of the key factors driving the right wing's push for the bill. However, Amona is not included among the 54 outposts that would be legalized, according to Peace Now.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, with much of the international community seeing them as a major obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.