Talk:Military occupation

message: I propose the following revision to the first paragraph in the body of the article to give a better sense of how land and property dominated by combat were handled before the 18th century, and to present brief historic and modern conceptualizations of occupation. (I provided an extended section of Benvenisti's source I quoted, because the entire source paragraph does a great job explaining the underlying relationships of occupation.) This revision removes mention of the Napoleonic wars, since they aren't mentioned in the source. Any feedback?
:A dominant principle that guided combatants through much of history was "to the victory belong the spoils". Emerich de Vattel, in The Law of Nations (1758), presented an early codification of the distinction between annexation of territory and military occupation, the latter being regarded as temporary, due to the natural right of states to their "continued existence". According to Eyal Benvenisti's The International Law of Occupation, Second Edition (2012), "The foundation upon which the entire [modern] law of occupation is based is the principle of inalienability of sovereignty through unilateral action of a foreign power, [and from this principle] springs the basic structural constraints that international law imposes upon the occupant."
:Dotyoyo (talk) 06:46, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  First paragraph of body 

message: An example provided on this page for a military occupation is the "Israeli occupation of the Western Golan Heights (1967–present)". However, the example does not exemplify the defining principles of the concept of "military occupation". On the page itself, military occupation is defined as such: "Military occupation... is the temporary military control by a ruling power over a sovereign territory that is outside of that ruling power's sovereign territory". It is absolutely necessary to note that Israel's control over the Western Golan Heights is not temporary - both in terms of the time that has already and is expected to pass since its capture as well as per Israel's intentions; Israel completed the annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981, and the United States, for instance, has since recognized the annexation. It is worthy to note further that residents of the Western Golan Heights are full Israeli citizens with equal rights and responsibilities under Israeli law just as all other Israelis are anywhere else within Israel proper. Due to that same annexation, the Western Golan Heights can also not be described as being "outside of that ruling power's sovereign territory". Moreover, the definition on Wikipedia for military occupation elaborates specifically: "Occupation is distinguished from annexation and colonialism by its intended temporary duration". Additionally, the population in the Western Golan Heights is not subject to Israeli military rule, but rather to Israeli law as enforced by the Israeli Police. So, these abovementioned aspects brought into account, according to the definition, the relation of Israel to the Western Golan Heights cannot be considered military occupation; that is clear and certain. Either the definition of "military occupation" on Wikipedia must be drastically modified (and will then include a variety of other examples; places such as California and Scotland will be listed as examples of current military occupations), or the example in discussion must be erased from this page. 
GeopoliticalSphygmomanometry (talk) 08:04, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever an individual's interpretation of the situation might be, that link deserves to be there - be it for encouraging the expression of opposing views such as that which you are presenting. The related article states "In 2019, the United States became the only state to recognize the Golan Heights as Israeli sovereign territory, while the rest of the international community etc, ". It doesn't seem any definition here was initially Wikipedia influenced in any possible way. --Askedonty (talk) 09:13, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example on the list does not conform with abovementioned definition of military occupation