Palestinian laborers work at a construction site in a new housing project in the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, near Jerusalem, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017. A Palestinian Cabinet minister on Tuesday called on the international community to punish Israel for a contentious new law, just hours after the Israeli parliament adopted the bill to retroactively legalize thousands of West Bank settlement homes built unlawfully on private Palestinian land.(AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
Palestinian laborers work at a construction site in a new housing project in the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, near Jerusalem, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017. A Palestinian Cabinet minister on Tuesday called on the international community to punish Israel for a contentious new law, just hours after the Israeli parliament adopted the bill to retroactively legalize thousands of West Bank settlement homes built unlawfully on private Palestinian land.(AP Photo/Oded Balilty) Credit: Oded Balilty

Jerusalem — Israeli human rights groups representing Arab villages in the West Bank petitioned the high court on Wednesday to block a contentious new law that would allow Israel to seize private Palestinian land and award it to Jewish settlers.

The first legal challenges to the law came amid especially blunt condemnation by Israel’s allies. Israel’s own attorney general warned that the bill violated international law and was likely to be blocked by the high court.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it was “deeply disappointed” in the bill, which has been called a “land grab” by its critics. “Our trust in the Israeli government’s commitment to the two-state solution has been fundamentally shaken,” a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

The German criticism echoed tough language by Britain, France, the European Union and the United Nations.

“As a long-standing friend of Israel, this bill damages Israel’s standing with its international partners,” said Tobias Ellwood, Britain’s minister for the Middle East.

The bill “crosses a very thick red line,” said Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.

The White House said the Trump administration was withholding comment until Israel’s courts rule on the legality of the bill. That could take weeks or longer.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House next week.

All eyes in the region will be on the meeting, as it will signal the depth of Trump’s support for Netanyahu and Israel, balanced against the United States’ Middle East allies.

Netanyahu supported the controversial bill, which passed the parliament along party lines, 62 to 50, late Monday.

In the days before the bill’s passage, Netanyahu and his defense minister announced that the state would build more than 6,000 new homes in Jewish settlements, branded as illegal by most of the world and as “unhelpful” by the Trump White House.

The promised building boom in the settlements, coupled with the bill that allows the state to seize Palestinian land, has put the Trump administration in a corner.

Either the U.S. president will give a green light to Israel’s hard-right government, now more beholden than ever to its religious settlers, or Trump will warn Israel to slow down and stake out his own position on the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.