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.

ARTicle: http://pnews.org/ArT/ExP/DiSPuted.shtml