Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: perché è inesatto parlare di territori occupati

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2768096/another-banana-moment.thtml
With his remarks about the Israeli settlements, Foreign Secretary
David Miliband (pictured eating an ice-cream in Damascus) has
signalled a sharp deterioration in relations between Britain and
Israel. Miliband has urged enforcement of an EU boycott of produce
from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, settlements he has called
‘illegal’.
I asked the Foreign Office for the legal basis of its opinion that the
settlements were illegal. It replied that it was the Geneva
Convention, which forbade the movement of a population into occupied
territory. I asked whether it was basing this on a ruling by any
particular body or whether this was merely its own reading of the
Geneva Convention. Oh, everyone accepts this is what the Geneva
Convention means, came the breezy reply. I then asked what was its
legal definition of the ‘occupied territories’. ‘As defined by UN
resolutions – which everyone accepts’— came the even breezier reply.
Is that so.
No it is not. It is in fact a total misrepresentation of international
law.
First, Article 2 of the Geneva Convention provides that the agreement
applies ‘to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory
of a high contracting party’, or sovereign territory. Thus the
Convention cannot apply to the West Bank, nor to East Jerusalem and
the Gaza Strip for that matter, because these have never been
recognized as sovereign territory. As part of Mandatory Palestine,
they never belonged to any sovereign state but were occupied and
administered illegally by Jordan and Egypt between 1948 and 1967 after
the Arab war of aggression against Israel in 1948.
Second, Article 49 of the Geneva Convention provides that an occupying
power ‘shall not deport or transfer part of its own civilian
population into the territory it occupies.’ This was designed to
prohibit inhumane practices such as by the Nazis and the Soviets
before and during the Second World War in forcibly transferring or
deporting people into or out of occupied territories. But the Israeli
settlers in the West Bank went there voluntarily. They have not been
‘deported’ or ‘transferred’ by the government of Israel. The only
force Israel has used is in getting them out of Gaza.  So clearly the
Geneva Convention does not apply in any sense to the West Bank
settlements.
Third, Israel is ‘occupying’ the West Bank (which on a day-to-day
basis is not ‘occupied’ but ruled by the Palestinians) entirely within
its rights under international law, which recognises the right of a
country that has been attacked to occupy and retain land that
continues to be used for belligerent purposes against it.  Which is
why the UN’s famous Resolution 242 was deliberately drafted to refer
to Israel withdrawing from ‘territories’ rather than all the
territories – and then only when the Arabs end their war against
Israel.
Fourth, the West Bank is not Palestinian land in any sense. As said
before, it was originally part of the British Mandate and then
illegally occupied by Jordan. Nor have the settlers occupied
individual Palestinians’ land, but have mainly built on empty space. I
do not condone the actions of some of these settlers against their
Arab neighbours, nor their attitudes; and I would like them to leave
most of these territories, in Israel’s own interests. But the claim
that Israel has ‘stolen’ Palestinian land is simply a lie.
Fifth and most important of all is something that is almost totally
overlooked. It is generally assumed that Israel’s claim to the West
Bank originated in 1967. Not so. Jews lived in many parts of it for
centuries – some of these places amongst the holiest of Jewish sites –
and were ethnically cleansed from it in the last century by Arab
pogroms in places like Hebron. It was in recognition of this, the
historic and inalienable connection of the Jews to this land, that the
original Mandate for Palestine – which included what is now the West
Bank and Gaza – instructed Britain to facilitate ‘close settlement’ by
the Jews in the whole of Mandate Palestine – a commitment which the
British proceeded systematically to betray – because of
the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the
grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.
As the late Eugene Rostow, the former US Under -Secretary of State for
Political Affairs who played a leading role in drafting Resolution
242, repeatedly said, that legal undertaking has never been rescinded.
It is still legally binding. The UN charter explicitly stated that
nothing in that charter should abrogate any pre-existing international
instruments. Far from being illegally settled in the disputed
territories, the Jews have every right to be there under international
law -- which says specifically they should settle in the West Bank.
As Rostow wrote:
...the Jews have the same right to settle there as they have to settle
in Haifa. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were never parts of Jordan,
and Jordan's attempt to annex the West Bank was not generally
recognized and has now been abandoned. The two parcels of land are
parts of the Mandate that have not yet been allocated to Jordan, to
Israel, or to any other state, and are a legitimate subject for
discussion.
The Foreign Office’s apparent ignorance of international law derives
from its own innate political hostility to Israel and its wholesale
endorsement -- along with virtually the entire British intelligentsia
-- of the mendacious propaganda of the enemies of Israel and the west.
Miliband’s remarks have nothing to do with international law, history
or the truth, which he has misrepresented and repudiated, but with
dirty and shameful politics. It appears that the British government
has now decided openly to side with the enemies of Israel – those
enemies who really have been thwarting international law for six
decades in their war of extermination.
Thus HMG is now marching in lockstep with its joyfully welcomed
comrade across the pond -- who will shortly enter the White House and
leave Israel abandoned, undermined, and under pressure to cut its own
throat.

 ‘illegal’.
OK, non ci sono territori occupati, tutta la Cisgiordania è Israele,
palestinesi inclusi. Da quando sei diventato sostenitore dello stato
binazionale?