A GROUP of eminent Israelis has urged Australia to continue to support "the international consensus" that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal.
The group said it noted "with deep concern" Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's recent comments about settlements.
Separately, four leading lawyers, including former attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair, have "reminded" Ms Bishop that it is the unanimous position of judges of the International Court of Justice that settlements are illegal.
The lawyers say that status has been confirmed by resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council and is the longstanding position of the Red Cross, the EU and most countries.
The Times of Israel reported that Ms Bishop had questioned whether settlements in the Palestinian territories were illegal.
"I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal," it reported the Foreign Minister as saying.
The group of Israelis has written to Ms Bishop: "Your statements come at a time when peace talks are precarious and settlements continue to expand.
"We believe the settlements cause tremendous damage to the fundamental rights and wellbeing of the Palestinians.
"But their disastrous impact goes beyond that: the settlement project threatens the viability of the two-state solution, thus endangers Israel's survival as a democracy and the homeland of the Jewish people."
The group said that, without a two-state solution, "Israel will continue to descend downhill towards becoming an apartheid state -- the opposite of what Israel's founding fathers envisioned."
Israel insists the settlements are not illegal.
Former government legal adviser Alan Baker recently wrote to US Secretary of State John Kerry: "Your determination that Israel's settlements are illegitimate cannot be legally substantiated.
"The oft-quoted prohibition on transferring population into occupied territory (Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) was, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross's own official commentary of that convention, drafted in 1949 to prevent the forced, mass transfer of populations carried out by the Nazis in the Second World War.
"It was never intended to apply to Israel's settlement activity."
The group who wrote in response to Ms Bishop's comments includes four winners of the Israel Prize, the country's most prestigious award: professor emeritus Yehoshua Kolodny; professor emeritus Yehuda Judd Neeman; professor emeritus Ram Loevy; and photographer Alex Levac.
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