Israel's Supreme Court on Sunday leveled harsh criticism at the state's request to revoke its ruling to evict a settler outpost in the West Bank.

In 2008, the legality of Ulpana, a disputed 15-family neighborhood adjacent to the settlement of Beit El, was cast into doubt after a Palestinian man, represented by a local human rights group, filed a petition claiming that it was built on private land that belonged to him.

While the residents retorted that they legally purchased the property from the plaintiff's relative, the Supreme Court in January 2011 ruled in favor of the Palestinian, later ordering the state to demolish the outpost by May 1, 2012.

"You're basically seeking to change your policy post-verdict. This is unheard of," Justice Uzi Fogelman said of the state's petition to call off the eviction in Sunday's hearing.

"When the state says it intends on doing something and the prime minister commits to it, we don't consider a scenario in which it doesn't get done," Fogelman said, according to the Ynet news website.

In late April, the state asked the court for a 60-day extension to the demolition order in order to review its policy on settler outposts deemed as illegal and to find alternative housing solutions for the residents of Ulpana.

The request came as the date set by the court for the outpost's dismantling neared, sparking a bitter altercation between senior cabinet ministers, with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya'alon accusing Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is in overall charge of West Bank settlement construction, of promoting the evacuation for political gain.

"We said that we will not remove this neighborhood," Ya'alon said, threatening that the government could fall over the issue.

The three-judge panel that convened Sunday blasted the state's request to call off the eviction altogether as a "bad precedent."

"I still don't understand the state's legal grounds here. You want to review a closed case. This is unprecedented," said Justice Salim Joubran.

"The state's commitment (to raze the outpost)... was not voluntary... The state has made a habit out of filing petitions asking for exemptions... Where will all this end?" he asked.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank -- home to some 300,000 people -- have been a core issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 1967 war. The Palestinians slate the area to become part of their future state, and have conditioned a resumption of long-stalled negotiations with Israel on a complete freeze of settlement construction.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously stated that Israel would be forced to make "painful concessions" -- hinting that many settlements would one day be evacuated, but pledged that large settlement blocs would remain under Israeli sovereignty in any future peace deal.

Left-wing Israeli lawmakers, who signed another petition asking the court to reject the state's request, condemned on Sunday the government's efforts to bail out of its commitment to dismantle the Ulpana outpost.

"The settler-ultra-Orthodox government of Netanyahu, (Foreign Minister Avigdor) Leiberman and (Interior Minister Eli) Yishai is now spitting in the face of the whole sane society," the Meretz party said in a statement, according to The Jerusalem Post.

"The state's request to cancel the final ruling is an inconceivable insult," the statement concluded.