Israelis were warned on illegality of settlements in 1967 memo
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article350586.ece
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem 11 March 2006
Israeli ministers were secretly warned just after the Six-Day War in
1967 that any policy of building settlements across occupied
Palestinian territories violated international law.
A "top secret" memo by the Foreign Ministry's then legal counsel said
that would "contravene the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva
Convention". Growth of Jewish settlements over the next three decades
followed.
The official advice that a policy which is now a major obstacle to a
peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had no basis
in international law has been highlighted by the Israeli historian,
Gershom Gorenberg. His new book, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the
Birth of the Settlements will generate fresh debate on the legality of
the West Bank settlements in the wake of Ariel Sharon's decision to
withdraw 8,500 settlers from Gaza last August.
Most of the international community has held that Jewish settlement in
the territories seized in the 1967 war contravened international law,
and the Geneva Conventions in particular, but this has long been
publicly contested by Israel.
The highly classified internal advice was given by Theodor Meron, who
left Israel a decade later and became a leading international jurist
who until the end of last year was president of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
After the 1967 Israeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol, made it known he
wanted settlements in the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the war,
and in the Jordan Valley, to make Israel's borders more defensible, Mr
Meron was asked whether international law allowed such settlement.
The counsel sanctioned short-term settlement "by military bodies
rather than civilian ones", but explicitly ruled out civilian
settlements which were energetically established by successive Israel
governments, leading to an Israeli population of more than 240,00 in
the West Bank today.
The Israeli acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has made it clear that
while Israel is prepared to withdraw further settlements from the West
Bank, it intends, unilaterally if it cannot reach a negotiated peace
deal, to annex territory occupied by others, including the three big
settlement blocks of Ma'ale Admumim, Gush Etzion and Ariel.
The Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, 78, who is still in a coma, had
secured assurances from President George Bush that borders in a "final
status" agreement with the Palestinians would allow such blocks to
remain in Israel.
Mr Meron's advice, also referred to in another recent book on the 1967
war and its aftermath by the eminent Israeli journalist Tom Segev,
also explicitly rejected an argument now used by Israel to defend the
legality of settlements, namely that the West Bank was not "normal"
occupied territory because it had not indisputably belonged to another
sovereign national power and had been unilaterally annexed by Jordan.
Mr Meron said the international community would regard settlement as
showing "intent to annex the West Bank", adding that "certain Israeli
actions are inconsistent with the claim that the West Bank is not
occupied territory". He pointed out that the government specifically
decreed military courts had to apply the Geneva Conventions in the
West Bank.
Israel has long argued that the policy of settlement conforms with the
1922 League of Nations decision at the San Remo conference in favour
of Jewish settlement in Palestine. It also contests that the Fourth
Geneva Convention's clear prohibition of transfers of civilian
population to occupied lands was drafted to deal with forced
population transfers in central and eastern Europe in the Second World
War.
Yesterday, Mark Regev, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Israel did
not accept that settlements properly decided by the government
contravened international law. "We distinguish between illegal
outposts, which will be demolished, and legal communities established
according to the law." He said the original advice had not been upheld
by decisions of the Israeli courts.
In yesterday's New York Times, Mr Gorenberg said: "Today it is clear
that Israel's future as a Jewish state depends on ending its rule of
the West Bank." He adds: "Thirty-eight years after the missed warning,
we must find a way to untie the entanglement."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article350586.ece
--
www.lp.org
.
|
