Palestinians sue Israel over settler outpost

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinians are demanding $427,000 (242,996 pounds) in compensation from Israel over its failure to remove Jewish settlers from a West Bank outpost built without Israeli government authorisation, a human rights group said on Monday.

The Israeli rights group, Yesh Din, described the lawsuit brought by five Palestinian landowners in a Jerusalem court as the first of its kind involving an unauthorised outpost.

In their petition for compensation, the landowners said the presence of 40 settler families at the Migron outpost in the occupied West Bank denied them access to their agricultural land.

According to the lawsuit, Israeli soldiers protect some 60 caravan homes at Migron.

Israel's Defence Ministry, the petitioners said, had failed to carry out a High Court order to present a plan by last August to remove the outpost.

The ministry, which had no immediate comment on the lawsuit, had said it wanted to move settlers from Migron to larger settlement blocs which Israel intends to keep in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

A U.S.-sponsored "road map" for peace, reaffirmed at the Annapolis summit last year that relaunched Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, calls on Israel to freeze all settlement activity on land Palestinians want for a state.

(Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Louise Ireland)