Eric Rozenman's Dec. 11 Op-Ed article, "Israeli settlements are more than legitimate," is legal nonsense that disregards history. He is correct in his observation that Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine permitted "close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes," but the conclusions he then draws are flatly wrong.

Rozenman fails to acknowledge that since its inception, Israel has never claimed legal title to all of the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine. On the contrary, it has repeatedly denied such a claim in official statements and acts. On May 22, 1948, soon after Israel's declaration of independence, the country's representative to the U.N. Security Council stated that its territory was "the area outlined in the map appended to the resolution of 29 November 1947, as constituting the area assigned to the Jewish state" -- namely that area accorded to the nascent Israel by the U.N. Partition Plan contained in General Assembly Resolution 181. This did not include the West Bank. The same view was consistently expressed by Israeli courts. In 1950, Israel's Supreme Court ruled, "The territory of the state of Israel does not coincide with all the territory under the former mandate." Israel thus refused to be seen as the successor state to the Palestinian mandate. Accordingly, it refused to accede to treaties that bound the mandate and refused to pay the public debt that Palestine owed to Britain. How then can there be a right of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, territory to which Israel itself has never made legal claim?

Rozenman argues that Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which prohibits the transfer of parts of a state's population into territory it occupies, does not apply to nonforcible population transfers. On the contrary, as the authoritative commentary of this convention prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross states, this prohibition was adopted precisely to prohibit the colonization of occupied territories. It does not distinguish between forcible and nonforcible population transfers. Article 49 prohibits any and all population transfers from the occupying power to occupied territory. In 2004, the International Court of Justice unanimously found that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory breached Article 49.

As a longtime observer of the International Court, I can state without fear of contradiction that it is easier to get cats to dance in a parade in costume than to obtain a unanimous ruling from the International Court.

Israel knew soon after the Six-Day War in 1967 that settlements in the occupied territory were illegal. As Gershom Gorenberg recounts in his book, "The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of Settlements," Theodor Meron, then legal advisor to Israel's ministry of foreign affairs and a distinguished international lawyer specializing in the law of armed conflict and human rights, advised the Israeli government in September 1967 that settlements in the newly occupied territory were prohibited by Article 49. (Click here for a facsimile of Meron's opinion in Hebrew at Gorenberg's website; an English translation is available here.)

The fundamental point about settlements, then, is not that they obstruct diplomacy -- which they do -- but rather that they are illegal. Occupied territory is not under the sovereignty of the occupant. It cannot treat the territory it occupies as it sees fit. An occupant's powers are circumscribed by international law, which unequivocally prohibits the settlement of part of its population, whether forcible or voluntary, in that territory. While this prohibition arises from Article 49, Article 1 requires parties not merely to respect the terms of the convention in their own conduct but also to ensure that others do. All states are party to the Geneva Conventions, therefore all states have the duty to ensure that Israel's illegal policy of creating settlements in occupied Palestinian territory ceases without further delay.

Iain Scobbie, the Sir Joseph Hotung Research Professor in Law at the University of London, is coauthor of "The Israel-Palestine Conflict in International Law: Territorial Issues," which is available for downloading here.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-scobbie17-2009dec17,0,2895217.story

FROM "OCCUPIED TERRITORIES" TO "DISPUTED TERRITORIES"
Dore Gold

"Occupation" as an Accusation

At the heart of the Palestinian diplomatic struggle against Israel is the repeated assertion that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are resisting "occupation." Speaking recently on CNN's Larry King Weekend, Hanan Ashrawi hoped that the U.S. war on terrorism would lead to new diplomatic initiatives to address its root "causes." She then went on to specifically identify "the occupation which has gone on too long" as an example of one of terrorism's sources.1 In other words, according to Ashrawi, the violence of the intifada emanates from the "occupation."

Mustafa Barghouti, president of the Palestinian Medical Relief Committees and a frequent guest on CNN as well, similarly asserted that: "the root of the problem is Israeli occupation."2 Writing in the Washington Post on January 16, 2002, Marwan Barghouti, head of Arafat's Fatah PLO faction in the West Bank, continued this theme with an article entitled: "Want Security? End the Occupation." This has become the most ubiquitous line of argument today among Palestinian spokesmen, who have to contend with the growing international consensus against terrorism as a political instrument.

This language and logic have also penetrated the diplomatic struggles in the United Nations. During August 2001, a Palestinian draft resolution at the UN Security Council repeated the commonly used Palestinian reference to the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "occupied Palestinian territories." References to Israel's "foreign occupation" also appeared in the Durban Draft Declaration of the UN World Conference Against Racism. The Libyan ambassador to the United Nations, in the name of the Arab Group Caucus, reiterated on October 1, 2001, what Palestinian spokesmen had been saying on network television: "The Arab Group stresses its determination to confront any attempt to classify resistance to occupation as an act of terrorism."3

Three clear purposes seem to be served by the repeated references to "occupation" or "occupied Palestinian territories." First, Palestinian spokesmen hope to create a political context to explain and even justify the Palestinians' adoption of violence and terrorism during the current intifada. Second, the Palestinian demand of Israel to "end the occupation" does not leave any room for territorial compromise in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as suggested by the original language of UN Security Council Resolution 242 (see below).

Third, the use of "occupied Palestinian territories" denies any Israeli claim to the land: had the more neutral language of "disputed territories" been used, then the Palestinians and Israel would be on an even playing field with equal rights. Additionally, by presenting Israel as a "foreign occupier," advocates of the Palestinian cause can delegitimize the Jewish historical attachment to Israel. This has become a focal point of Palestinian diplomatic efforts since the failed 2000 Camp David Summit, but particularly since the UN Durban Conference in 2001. Indeed, at Durban, the delegitimization campaign against Israel exploited the language of "occupation" in order to invoke the memories of Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War and link them to Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.4

The Terminology of Other Territorial Disputes

The politically-loaded term "occupied territories" or "occupation" seems to apply only to Israel and is hardly ever used when other territorial disputes are discussed, especially by interested third parties. For example, the U.S. Department of State refers to Kashmir as "disputed areas."5 Similarly in its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the State Department describes the patch of Azerbaijan claimed as an independent republic by indigenous Armenian separatists as "the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh."6

Despite the 1975 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice establishing that Western Sahara was not under Moroccan territorial sovereignty, it is not commonly accepted to describe the Moroccan military incursion in the former Spanish colony as an act of "occupation." In a more recent decision of the International Court of Justice from March 2001, the Persian Gulf island of Zubarah, claimed by both Qatar and Bahrain, was described by the Court as "disputed territory," until it was finally allocated to Qatar.7

Of course each situation has its own unique history, but in a variety of other territorial disputes from northern Cyprus, to the Kurile Islands, to Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf -- which have involved some degree of armed conflict -- the term "occupied territories" is not commonly used in international discourse.8

Thus, the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip appears to be a special exception in recent history, for in many other territorial disputes since the Second World War, in which the land in question was under the previous sovereignty of another state, the term "occupied territory" has not been applied to the territory that had come under one side's military control as a result of armed conflict.

No Previously-Recognized Sovereignty in the Territories

Israel entered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli legal experts traditionally resisted efforts to define the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "occupied" or falling under the main international treaties dealing with military occupation. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote in the 1970s that there is no de jure applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention regarding occupied territories to the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign."

In fact, prior to 1967, Jordan had occupied the West Bank and Egypt had occupied the Gaza Strip; their presence in those territories was the result of their illegal invasion in 1948, in defiance of the UN Security Council. Jordan's 1950 annexation of the West Bank was recognized only by Great Britain (excluding the annexation of Jerusalem) and Pakistan, and rejected by the vast majority of the international community, including the Arab states.

At Jordan's insistence, the 1949 Armistice Line, that constituted the Israeli-Jordanian boundary until 1967, was not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: "no provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations" (emphasis added) (Article II.2).

As noted above, in many other cases in recent history in which recognized international borders were crossed in armed conflicts and sovereign territory seized, the language of "occupation" was not used -- even in clear-cut cases of aggression. Yet in the case of the West Bank and Gaza, where no internationally recognized sovereign control previously existed, the stigma of Israel as an "occupier" has gained currency.

Aggression vs. Self-Defense

International jurists generally draw a distinction between situations of "aggressive conquest" and territorial disputes that arise after a war of self-defense. Former State Department Legal Advisor Stephen Schwebel, who later headed the International Court of Justice in the Hague, wrote in 1970 regarding Israel's case: "Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title."9

Here the historical sequence of events on June 5, 1967, is critical, for Israel only entered the West Bank after repeated Jordanian artillery fire and ground movements across the previous armistice lines. Jordanian attacks began at 10:00 a.m.; an Israeli warning to Jordan was passed through the UN at 11:00 a.m.; Jordanian attacks nonetheless persisted, so that Israeli military action only began at 12:45 p.m. Additionally, Iraqi forces had crossed Jordanian territory and were poised to enter the West Bank. Under such circumstances, the temporary armistice boundaries of 1949 lost all validity the moment Jordanian forces revoked the armistice and attacked. Israel thus took control of the West Bank as a result of a defensive war.

The language of "occupation" has allowed Palestinian spokesmen to obfuscate this history. By repeatedly pointing to "occupation," they manage to reverse the causality of the conflict, especially in front of Western audiences. Thus, the current territorial dispute is allegedly the result of an Israeli decision "to occupy," rather than a result of a war imposed on Israel by a coalition of Arab states in 1967.

Israeli Rights in the Territories

Under UN Security Council Resolution 242 from November 22, 1967 -- that has served as the basis of the 1991 Madrid Conference and the 1993 Declaration of Principles -- Israel is only expected to withdraw "from territories" to "secure and recognized boundaries" and not from "the territories" or "all the territories" captured in the Six-Day War. This deliberate language resulted from months of painstaking diplomacy. For example, the Soviet Union attempted to introduce the word "all" before the word "territories" in the British draft resolution that became Resolution 242. Lord Caradon, the British UN ambassador, resisted these efforts.10 Since the Soviets tried to add the language of full withdrawal but failed, there is no ambiguity about the meaning of the withdrawal clause contained in Resolution 242, which was unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council.

Thus, the UN Security Council recognized that Israel was entitled to part of these territories for new defensible borders. Britain's foreign secretary in 1967, George Brown, stated three years later that the meaning of Resolution 242 was "that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories."11 Taken together with UN Security Council Resolution 338, it became clear that only negotiations would determine which portion of these territories would eventually become "Israeli territories" or territories to be retained by Israel's Arab counterpart.

Actually, the last international legal allocation of territory that includes what is today the West Bank and Gaza Strip occurred with the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which recognized Jewish national rights in the whole of the Mandated territory: "recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." The members of the League of Nations did not create the rights of the Jewish people, but rather recognized a pre-existing right, that had been expressed by the 2,000-year-old quest of the Jewish people to re-establish their homeland.

Moreover, Israel's rights were preserved under the United Nations as well, according to Article 80 of the UN Charter, despite the termination of the League of Nations in 1946. Article 80 established that nothing in the UN Charter should be "construed to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments." These rights were unaffected by UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 1947 -- the Partition Plan -- which was a non-binding recommendation that was rejected, in any case, by the Palestinians and the Arab states.

Given these fundamental sources of international legality, Israel possesses legal rights with respect to the West Bank and Gaza Strip that appear to be ignored by those international observers who repeat the term "occupied territories" without any awareness of Israeli territorial claims. Even if Israel only seeks "secure boundaries" that cover part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, there is a world of difference between a situation in which Israel approaches the international community as a "foreign occupier" with no territorial rights, and one in which Israel has strong historical rights to the land that were recognized by the main bodies serving as the source of international legitimacy in the previous century.

After Oslo, Can the Territories be Classified as "Occupied"?

In the 1980s, President Carter's State Department legal advisor, Herbert Hansell, sought to shift the argument over occupation from the land to the Palestinians who live there. He determined that the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention governing military occupation applied to the West Bank and Gaza Strip since its paramount purpose was "protecting the civilian population of an occupied territory."12 Hansell's legal analysis was dropped by the Reagan and Bush administrations; nonetheless, he had somewhat shifted the focus from the territory to its populace. Yet here, too, the standard definitions of what constitutes an occupied population do not easily fit, especially since the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Agreements.

Under Oslo, Israel transferred specific powers from its military government in the West Bank and Gaza to the newly created Palestinian Authority. Already in 1994, the legal advisor to the International Red Cross, Dr. Hans-Peter Gasser, concluded that his organization had no reason to monitor Israeli compliance with the Fourth Geneva Convention in the Gaza Strip and Jericho area, since the Convention no longer applied with the advent of Palestinian administration in those areas.13

Upon concluding the Oslo II Interim Agreement in September 1995, which extended Palestinian administration to the rest of the West Bank cities, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres declared: "once the agreement will be implemented, no longer will the Palestinians reside under our domination. They will gain self-rule and we shall return to our heritage."14

Since that time, 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has come under Palestinian jurisdiction.15 Israel transferred 40 spheres of civilian authority, as well as responsibility for security and public order, to the Palestinian Authority, while retaining powers for Israel's external security and the security of Israeli citizens.

The 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 6) states that the Occupying Power would only be bound to its terms "to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory." Under the earlier 1907 Hague Regulations, as well, a territory can only be considered occupied when it is under the effective and actual control of the occupier. Thus, according to the main international agreements dealing with military occupation, Israel's transfer of powers to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Agreements has made it difficult to continue to characterize the West Bank and Gaza as occupied territories.

Israel has been forced to exercise its residual powers in recent months only in response to the escalation of violence and armed attacks instigated by the Palestinian Authority.16 Thus, any increase in defensive Israeli military deployments today around Palestinian cities is the direct consequence of a Palestinian decision to escalate the military confrontation against Israel, and not an expression of a continuing Israeli occupation, as the Palestinians contend. For once the Palestinian leadership takes the strategic decision to put an end to the current wave of violence, there is no reason why the Israeli military presence in the West Bank and Gaza cannot return to its pre-September 2000 deployment, which minimally affected the Palestinians.

Describing the territories as "Palestinian" may serve the political agenda of one side in the dispute, but it prejudges the outcome of future territorial negotiations that were envisioned under UN Security Council Resolution 242. It also represents a total denial of Israel's fundamental rights. Furthermore, reference to "resisting occupation" has simply become a ploy advanced by Palestinian and Arab spokesmen to justify an ongoing terrorist campaign against Israel, despite the new global consensus against terrorism that has been formed since September 11, 2001.

It would be far more accurate to describe the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "disputed territories" to which both Israelis and Palestinians have claims. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright stated in March 1994: "We simply do not support the description of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 War as occupied Palestinian territory."

* * *

http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp470.htm

Everything you have been posting are directly from zionist websites. hey it is true jews control the media

Both sides are wrong! Britian screwed up apportioning the borders the way they did. If anything Blame England!

Good point! Maybe the best solution is to break Israel up into the biblical 12 tribes and move them to the most historically correct areas.

I gladly read non-zionist and zionist websites. A good point is
a good point. Do you only post from anti-zionist sources?



Since it appears that there is PLENTY of anti-Israel propaganda
out there - it hardly looks like the jews control the media!



England?!

The history of the region predates Britain....



I'll blame them anyway though!

Ah.ha..Yes... Quite.

And 'we all know' [sic] how 'fair' and 'favorably' international 'law' treats Israel ...

Israeli Rights in the Territorie
It would be far more accurate to describe the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "disputed territories" to which both Israelis and Palestinians have claims. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright stated in March 1994: "We simply do not support the description of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 War as occupied Palestinian territory."
[quote ]
its an occupation alls has been and the hebrews started the war . the city of jerusalem was there before the jews got there .they traviled there from all over araba . but most came from yemani . they over threw the orignel peoples who had been there for thousands of years . that what happens when you don't control imagration . they stated for 212 years before being run out by the latins and came back after being run out of europe and started another war with the orignals which puts use here today . all those big noses that bribed the un and or officials .who said it was theres had NO RIGHT TO TELL ANYONE WHAT TO DO THERE .
in this ilmoral world you can buy good well .

Does anyone care about international law? Not Me I stand Wish the Israelis The Pallies Can rot for all I care Jerusalem IS NOT a settlement they have every right to build there

Powerful Israeli lobbies have succeeded in establishing a far right agenda world wide when it comes to the Israelo-Palestinian situation, which has a lot more to do with McCarthy like suppression of 'freedom of speech' through demagogic propaganda, impeachment of character and calumnious attacks, than seeking truth and justice.

In spite of the fact that the 'religious-fundamentalist-far right-extremist' lobbies have succeeded in the past to win the Public Relation game and World sympathy, more and more voices of dissent from within the Jewish and Israeli families are courageously and honestly trying to set the record straight.

One of those voices is B'Tselem, which, as an Israeli Human rights watch organization, serving the Isareli population and the Knesset, in bringing a perspective rich with facts and rigorously documented, which serves to bring to light the fact that it is time for Israel's far right faction to retire, and allow the more objective and 'open-minded' factions of the Sovereign State of Israel to take full account, and act on their National and International responsibilities as a Sovereign Nation.

About B'TSELEM
http://www.btselem.org/English/About_BTselem/Index.asp

B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was established in 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members. It endeavors to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel.

B'Tselem on EAST JERUSALEM
http://www.btselem.org/English/Jerusalem/

Since East Jerusalem was annexed in 1967, the government of Israel’s primary goal in Jerusalem has been to create a demographic and geographic situation that will thwart any future attempt to challenge Israeli sovereignty over the city. To achieve this goal, the government has been taking actions to increase the number of Jews, and reduce the number of Palestinians, living in the city.


At the end of 2005, the population of Jerusalem stood at 723,700: 482,500 Jews (67 percent) and 241,200 Palestinians (33 percent). About 58 percent of the residents live on land that was annexed in 1967 (45 percent of whom are Jews, and 55 percent Palestinians). With the Palestinians having a higher growth rate than the Jews, Israel has used various methods to achieve its goal:

- Physically isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, in part by building the separation barrier;

- Discriminating in land expropriation, planning, and building, and demolition of houses;

- Revoking residency and social benefits of Palestinians who stay abroad for at least seven years, or who are unable to prove that their center of life is in Jerusalem;

- Unfairly dividing the budget between the two parts of the city, with harmful effects on infrastructure and services in East Jerusalem.


Israel’s policy gravely infringes the rights of residents of East Jerusalem and flagrantly breaches international law.

East Jerusalem is occupied territory. Therefore, it is subject, as is the rest of the West Bank, to the provisions of international humanitarian law that relate to occupied territory. The annexation of East Jerusalem breaches international law, which prohibits unilateral annexation. For this reason, the international community, including the United States, does not recognize the annexation of East Jerusalem.

B'Tselem On LAND EXPROPRIATION AND SETTLEMENTS (excerpt)
http://www.btselem.org/English/Settlements/

Because the very establishment of the settlements is illegal, and in light of the human rights violations resulting from the existence of the settlements, B’Tselem demands that Israel evacuate the settlements. The action must be done in a way that respects the settlers’ human rights, including the payment of compensation.

Clearly, evacuation of the settlements will be complex and will take time; however there are intermediate steps that can be taken immediately so as to reduce, to the extent possible, human rights violations and breaches of international law.

For example, the government should cease new construction in the settlements – both the building of new settlements and the expansion of existing settlements.

It must also freeze the planning and building of new bypass roads and must cease expropriating and seizing land intended for the bypass roads.

The government must return to Palestinian villages all the non-built-up land that was placed within the municipal jurisdiction of the settlements and the regional councils, eliminate the planning boards in the settlements, and, as a result thereof, revoke the power of the local authorities to draw up outline plans and grant building permits.

Also, the government must cease the granting of incentives to encourage Israeli citizens to move to settlements and must make resources available to encourage settlers to move inside Israel’s borders.

Two words: Never again.

B'Tselem and its skewed 'opinion' is irrelevant.

Well, B'Tselem doesn't work in the public relation field of opinions, and 'spin' science.

It provides the only data and factual documents available, to members of the Knesset and the Israeli population at large, helping to keep some form of integrity in The Israeli Sovereign Nation obligations to respect Human rights and International laws.

The only part that is 'skewed' here, is your rash rebuttal which shows total ignorance of this organization's work and contribution to Israel, the high degree of respect shown for their mission from the Israeli population, the Knesset, the international community, and the Quartet of Nations!!!

You don't like 'em!?!?!?

Well, that is YOUR skewed opinion, and quite honestly, with all due respect to you personally, and your legitimate right to an opinion, IT IS MOST IRRELEVANT!!!

Wow. Hit a nerve, huh ... ? Yay me. I'm so happy you feel I have a 'right' to MY opinion ... mighty big of you.

As for B'Tselem, their 'opinion' is just as idiotic as that of Jews who know [sic] history yet choose to ignore it and who vote for people who will volitionally give orders that have direct negative impact on their life, health and well-being in order to serve some 'greater international good'. Never. Again.

Just because B'Tselem can fool the Knesset and others means nothing. That's just called 'public relations'.

You have stated your opinion. We understand the first time around. You don't need to repeat yourself.

Now, do you have anything of substance to say, which you might support with reputable third party sources, other than : 'the work or opinions of B'Tselem is 'idiotic', and simple 'p.r.' work'?

I say that, because your opinion and position on the matter, which I am sure is still popular with some of your obvious bedfellows, is no longer shared in mainstream American and Israeli Jewish circles.