Legal Background Israel and Palestine
What national and international Laws govern the conflict? What of Geneva Conventions? UN resolutions? US Law?
Friday, August 29, 2003
Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Nothing doing: "Nothing doing
A new Palestinian report on UN resolutions exposes the double standards at the heart of Bush's rationale for action against Iraq, says Brian Whitaker
Tuesday September 24, 2002
... 'All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment,' he [Bush] continued. 'Are security council resolutions to be honoured and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? [...] Right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime.'
The same could be said of various other countries ...
Largely as a result of American pressure, criticisms of Israel in security council resolutions also tend to be softer than the criticisms of other countries for similar offences.
Not only that. Thirty-two draft resolutions criticising Israel since 1972 have never seen the light of day because the US used its security council veto to block them
...
In 1980, the security council issued a resolution saying that these activities had "no legal validity" and constituted "a flagrant violation of the fourth Geneva convention". It decided to establish a commission "to examine the situation".
Israel refused to co-operate with the commission and the security council responded with another resolution "strongly deploring" Israel's refusal.
...
"We cannot stand by and do nothing", Mr Bush told delegates to the UN. He was talking, of course, about Iraq. But in the case of Israel, we not only can do nothing - we do do nothing. "
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UN demands Israeli retreat: "UN demands Israeli retreat
· New resolution passed
· US abstains from vote
· Nine die in Gaza City fighting
Simon Jeffery and agencies
Tuesday September 24, 2002
The UN security council today passed a resolution demanding Israel withdraw from Palestinian towns and end the destruction of Palestinian property.
But the near unanimous vote in New York, from which only the US abstained, appeared to have had little immediate impact in the Middle East as nine Palestinians today died in fighting in Gaza City."
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Telegraph | News | Israeli 'human shield' dies in raid on militant: "Israeli 'human shield' dies in raid on militant
By Inigo Gilmore in Jerusalem
(Filed: 16/08/2002)
The Israeli army defended its use of Palestinian civilians as 'human shields' yesterday after a teenager was shot dead when he was press-ganged into the hunt for a leading militant.
Nidal Abu M'khisan, 19, was seized by troops in the West Bank village of Tubas, near Jenin, on Wednesday. According to Palestinians, he was then taken at gunpoint to a house where Nasser Jarrar, a wheelchair-bound local leader of the Hamas military wing, was hiding out.
Israeli human rights groups, who are investigating the army's actions, said the teenager was then given a flak jacket - a clear indication that the soldiers with him thought he could be fired on."
Ha'aretz - Article: "The road to The Hague Sunday, May 12, 2002
By Gideon Levy
Fatma Zakarana, 32, a hired farmhand, and her two children, Muhammed and Abir, aged four and three, were killed last Sunday in the fields of Qabatiyah, east of Jenin in the West Bank, when a tank crew, which mistakenly thought that it had hit a bomb, opened fire on them.
The feeling that prevails today is that there are virtually no restrictions on killing Palestinians because the IDF will back up its soldiers in every case. The soldiers no longer need to have a "lawyer at their side," as they complained with exaggeration during the first intifada; Yitzhak Rabin's dream of a war "without the High Court of Justice and without B'Tselem" has become a reality.
...
They have to know that if Kosovo is already here, and it is, then The Hague is not far behind.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Israel blocks UN mission to Jenin: "Israel blocks UN mission to Jenin
Suzanne Goldenberg in Jerusalem
Wednesday April 24, 2002
The Guardian
Israel reneged on its commitment to an international investigation of its offensive against the Jenin refugee camp last night, throwing the United Nations mission into disarray.
Hours after a chorus of Israeli officials, including the foreign minister, Shimon Peres, said Israel had nothing to hide, the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, decided the team, announced just 24 hours earlier by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, was no longer acceptable. "
Israel and the United nations. Israel uses the 1947 UN plan as the legal foundation for the state of Israel, yet Israel ignores all UN resolutions.
Telegraph | Opinion | Truth is obscured by details: "whether a group of people fighting authority are called terrorists or resistance fighters depends on this basic truth and here the basic truth is that Palestinian's land has been occupied for 36 years and are having the little left to them inexorably and illegally confiscated to become settlements and thus part of Israel.
When such a people who are facing this injustice have no military, get no help from the international community and are facing one of the best armed forces on the planet they have to do whatever is possible, it is not terrorism it is resistance to oppression. They could of course choose passive resistance assuming that they did not mind ending up with a country about the size of a football pitch surrounded by a wall, built of course on the football pitch."
Telegraph | News | Model community split by a fence: "More than 40 families from the village are now camping on their plots, fearful that one day the gates will be locked shut - which is likely to happen if any terrorist uses them to enter Israel - and they will never be allowed to return to their land.
Under an old Ottoman law used by Israel to confiscate Palestinian territory, farmland not used for three years reverts to the Sultan - that is to Israel, the occupying power"
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
American Committee on Jerusalem / Chicago Tribune September 25, 2002: "Israel on Tuesday answered a United Nations demand to pull troops out of the West Bank by sending armored bulldozers back into the besieged headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and crafting a public statement that virtually ignored the Security Council demands"
