Question: Who's the Occupier? - by Varda Meyers Epstein

...Using the language of occupation, in other words, serves not only to state your politics on the subject of Israel, it tells others that you have an actual dislike of Israel: that Israel disgusts you and is seen by you as morally corrupt, a thief that stole land that belongs to others—others with brown skin!

Varda Meyers Epstein..
Judean Rose/Elder of Ziyon..
02 August '18..

The language of occupation is an oft-wielded weapon against Israel. Those who use it have interests at odds with the existence of the Jewish State. They may refer to Israel as an “illegal occupier,” and the Jewish State’s presence in the Middle East as an “illegal occupation.” The IDF, Israel’s military, is variously known by the anti-Israel media as “occupying forces," the “military occupation,” and even Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Judea and Samaria, and sometimes all of Jerusalem, are referred to as “occupied territories.” We also see “OPT," shorthand for “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” in lists of countries we must choose from when filling out online forms or making purchases.

The purpose of this language is to negate the right of the Jewish State to exist on land that Arabs assert belongs to them. And since Arabs assert that all of Israel is on land that belongs to them, all of Israel is, according to this narrative, illegally occupied by the Jewish people, or put more simply, Israel is illegal, and therefore, has no right to exist. To date, there is no part of the current State of Israel in which Arabs would accept a Jewish state. Everywhere that Israel is, it is an occupier.

But the word “occupier” is more than just a vehicle for negation. There’s an unsavory quality to the word, suggesting that the entity in question is a usurper. Meaning: hey, that land belongs to someone else!

And of course, if Israel is an “occupier” and the land belongs to someone else, that makes Israel a thief. And the someone else must be Arabs.

The new media editor of the Times of Israel says that Ahed Tamimi's family lives under occupation. But the Tamimi Family lives in Nabi Saleh, which is governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Having painted Israel in this hideous light, the image of the Jewish State evolves into something shady and repellent. Using the language of occupation, in other words, serves not only to state your politics on the subject of Israel, it tells others that you have an actual dislike of Israel: that Israel disgusts you and is seen by you as morally corrupt, a thief that stole land that belongs to others—others with brown skin!

The language of occupation suggests, in fact, that you’ve made a moral choice regarding the State of Israel. That you believe Jews have no right to their ancient and indigenous territories, since some Arabs were born there in the 19th or 20th centuries. You believe this latter day history cancels out Jewish rights. And certainly it cancels out the bible, which is describing really old stuff, if any of it happened at all. Which you doubt.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Okay, I'll Talk About Occupation - by Yisrael Medad

For all Birthright participants, past, present and future, who are worried they may not really be told anything on occupation when in Israel (or were told something on their campuses/from friends and were hoping to learn something to combat what they felt are lies), here's the nitty-gritty:

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
17 July '18..
Link: http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2018/07/okay-ill-talk-about-occupation.html

There is an occupation. Two, in fact. At least.

As a result of non-stop Arab terror throughout the 1950s and 1960s (heard of the fedayeen and the PLO's Fatah, all operational before 1967?), Israel was forced to defend itself in June 1967. Yes, defend. The administration of the territories taken in that war is a "belligerent occupation". That's the first occupation.

But don't be fooled. The term "belligerent" doesn't mean that Israel's administration is belligerent (some will try to fool you and rewrite the definition like this: 'Military occupation occurs when a belligerent state invades the territory of another state'. Israel was not 'belligerent' in the way that is phrased. It was threatened, water route closed off, UN supervisors kicked out of Sinai and Jordan actually invaded Jerusalem and shelled Israeli locations. Oh, and there was no "state of Palestine"). The use of 'belligerent' was simply to indicate that it resulted from a war like in this definition: "belligerent occupation [is] established as a consequence of an armed conflict, that is to say through the conduct of hostilities". And Israel fought a war that was defensive, against hostile countries. And it was a just war. And justified. And moral.

Just by the way: "the 1949 Geneva Conventions do not contain a definition of belligerent occupation".

UPDATE: Some claim this - "The Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the West Bank, to the Gaza Strip, and to the entire City of Jerusalem, in order to protect the Palestinians living there." Others point to the fact that the Convention is between High Contracting Parties and as there never was a state called "Palestine", and no legal political sovereignty therein, Israel need protect anybody there but not because they are "Palestinians" but because they are humans who deserve humanitarian rights. What anti-occupationists do is to extend this misrepresentation and use humanitarian law to leverage political rights. That's cheating.

The second occupation could very well be the Arab occupation of Eretz-Yisrael but more on that later.

There is nothing wrong in using "Judea & Samaria".

Judea and Samaria (in Hebrew, Yehuda v'Shomron) is the correct name for the territory that Jordan occupied beginning in 1949 until Israel assumed its administration in 1967. As regards who is the legal sovereign, there is a dispute. So, okay, it's "disputed territory". Some actually think it is "liberated territory". For sure it was included in the area of the historic Jewish homeland that was to become the Jewish state as decided by the League of Nations in 1922.

Actually, Israeli Rule in the West Bank Is Legal under International Law - Interview with Professor Eugene Kontorovich by Sarah Haetzni-Cohen

People say that the status quo is not stable, but in fact the status quo here is the most stable in the entire Middle East. A final status plan needs to look like the status quo – only official, organized, and not temporary.

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
08 April '18..
Link: http://jcpa.org/why-israeli-rule-in-the-west-bank-is-legal-under-international-law/

An interview with Professor Eugene Kontorovich by Sarah Haetzni-Cohen

Q: From the viewpoint of international law, how can the legal position of Judea and Samaria [West Bank] be defined?

Professor Kontorovich: The question that should be asked is: What were the borders of Israel when it was first established? What defines this is the borders at the moment of independence. Israel was created, like most countries, after a successful war where no one came to its aid. In international law, there is a clear rule regarding the establishment of new countries: the country’s borders are determined in accordance with the borders of the previous political entity in that area. So what was here before? The British Mandate. And what were the borders of the British Mandate? From the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

The UN General Assembly’s declaration on November 29, 1947, was a recommendation for partition rather than an operative resolution. What actually defined the situation was what the Mandate did, and it neither accepted the recommendations nor put them into force. During the War of Independence, Jordan and Egypt conquered territories from Israel illegally, and it was almost universally agreed that neither Jordan nor Egypt had any legitimate claim of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria or Gaza. But Israel did. When Israel liberated the territories in 1967, it renewed its control over lands that it had sovereignty over based on the Mandatory borders.

Today, the prevalent approach is that even though the land did not belong to Jordan, it was “Jordanian enough,” and therefore the laws of occupation and the Geneva Convention apply to it. This is nonsense, because even if we assumed this was correct, the Geneva Convention no longer applies when there is a peace treaty, and there has been a peace treaty with Jordan since 1994. It has to be either one or the other: Either it belonged to Israel all the time and Israel liberated its own territory in 1967, and you can’t occupy your own territory. Alternatively, it was “Jordanian enough” in 1967 for the laws of occupation to apply. In that case, the peace treaty with Jordan nullified the Geneva Convention. The Oslo Accords even took it a step further and granted local self-government.

Q: Some claim that even if we did not occupy land, we are occupying people.

Kontorovich: People try to put these two things together, but there is no connection between them. If someone wants to talk about ethics, let’s talk about ethics, not international law. Why do people want to discuss international law when they are essentially talking about ethics? Because ethics are subjective, but the law was created to bring people to agree on the rules in a situation where they have different ethical positions.

These are not occupied territories. These are territories over which Israel has sovereign claims. There are many examples in the world of cases where a nation has sovereignty, but it provides a different kind of governing arrangement. In our case, at the moment, it’s military rule. One example is American Samoa. There, they have their own administration, but without independence. The residents don’t have citizenship, and they can’t vote in U.S. elections even if they move to New York.

Kontorovich reiterates what he believes is a critical point. The Palestinians have the right to vote in Palestinian elections, and self-government. Yet we act as if Oslo never occurred.

Kontorovich: The basic philosophy of democracy – and now we are no longer talking about legal claims because there is no such thing as a right to representative democracy in international law – is that people must have representation in a government that decides how their lives will look. In America, there is a principle: “No taxation without representation.” Does Israel levy taxes on the Palestinians? No. Sometimes it’s the opposite. We pay for them out of our own pockets. Do we issue them traffic tickets or impose family laws upon them? Not at all. All we do is govern from a security point of view, and it is not an issue of democracy.

In international law, a people has the right to self-determination, but that does not mean an independent state. There are thousands of ethnic groups around the world that want an independent state – Catalans, Kurds, or the Tamils in Sri Lanka. International law has told each one of them, “no.” The Catalans have the right to vote, but the Spanish government can more or less do whatever it wants to them. It can tax them, decide that their elections are not legal, and dissolve their government. We, on the other hand, can’t do that in Area A [of the Palestinian Authority]. Our involvement in Area A is only security, and that’s completely legitimate. We don’t tax them. We only collect taxes for them, which happens in many other places around the world. It’s for sure not “ruling over them.”

One of the principles of self-determination is that a nation is responsible for its decisions. If the Palestinians say they are a nation and Mahmoud Abbas is their leader, they need to bear the consequences of his actions. When a people’s self-determination representative says “no” to internationally-backed offers of full independent statehood – which very few peoples are even lucky enough to be offered – this means they accept the alternative, which is the status quo. Imagine what the Kurds would do if the international community recognized a state for them in northern Iraq only. This is way beyond what they have ever imagined. It’s very rare to be offered a state with so much international support. If the Palestinians allow themselves to refuse, they have to take the consequences. These consequences are the alternatives to a state.

Q: What’s the next stage?

Kontorovich: The basic idea is a Palestinian self-government within a defined territory. They already have something like this today. It doesn’t mean they can put us in danger, but they can govern themselves. The second stage is the dissolution of Israel’s military rule in Judea and Samaria. Some of the area would be under regular Israeli law (and the Palestinians living there would be offered citizenship). We should not use the term “annexation,” because when you annex something, it is not yours. “Imposing sovereignty” is also not an exact definition because Israel’s sovereignty today in Judea and Samaria is expressed through military rule, which is something that is possible and acceptable.

We mustn’t say that we don’t claim sovereignty over Areas A and B, but we are simply choosing a different method of government in order to maximize the self-determination of the residents in these areas. This type of government grants autonomy that does not include voting in Israeli general elections. It exists in other places around the world. One example of this is the Isle of Man. They don’t vote in British Parliamentary elections, but in elections for their own self-government. However, all of their foreign policies and defense issues are handled by the United Kingdom. Gaza needs to be treated differently. From a legal point of view, it could be said that the Palestinians already have a state in Gaza.

Some Principles to Follow

I asked Kontorovich to describe a few rules of thumb, some dos and don’ts, and significant principles. They are as follows:

1. You need to be very careful with the terminology you use. Judea and Samaria are not “occupied territories,” but if we keep calling them that, this is an understanding that will stick. We should also not use on any level – professional, legal, or political – the words “laws of occupation.” Furthermore, Israel needs to stop applying the humanitarian aspects of the Geneva Convention – something which Israel has done voluntarily, beyond the letter of the law. There is no legal requirement to do this.

2. If we want to say that we have any claim on the land, we should go ahead and show it. It doesn’t mean we have to ultimately keep 100 percent of everything. But we need to clarify our claim from the legal point of view. If we claim that Judea and Samaria are occupied, then we have no basis for being in Jerusalem because there is no legal difference. We think that we can choose and everyone will accept it. What’s the basic demand of the Palestinians? They want Judea, Samaria, and more. Why? Because if a thief comes and steals your property, you don’t just thank him when he gives it back to you.

3. We need to understand that the Israeli government’s position will always be the most pro-Israel one available. No one in the entire world is going to be to the right of us on our claims – thus our claims set the outside parameters of international discussion. We always want to be logical and practical, but we miss this dynamic and then complain that it’s not fair.

4. The Trump administration is an opportunity that may never repeat itself. He has thrown the old paradigms out of the window, and fulfilled promises. He understands that whoever says “no” also has to take responsibility. We have to be ready to present a clear vision after his present diplomatic efforts fail.

5. Our vision must be clear and principled: Israeli law in one part of the territory and Palestinian self-government in the other. It is not a good idea to give too many details about where sovereignty will lie or it will just hold us back in the future.

6. The situation is neither black nor white – two states or one. No one takes any notice of what lies in between. There are many such examples in the world. Why would we think that one of the most complicated places would not require a more complex and nuanced solution?

7. We are constantly on the defensive and in a state of fear. We have forgotten the rules of diplomacy: Don’t start the battle by showing how much you are afraid, neither defensively, economically, or demographically.

8. The government often chooses an unclear, ambiguous policy toward Judea and Samaria, out of fear of international reaction. This reaction is not necessarily connected to what Israel does. There is a basic appetite for criticism of Israel. Just as we never get international credit for making concessions, there isn’t always a price for every activist decision that we make. Unfortunately, we have shown that we are under pressure and prepared to give in, and so they focus on us.

9.
The Palestinians are the only nation that ever said “no” to an offer of independence with international support. We must repeatedly point this out.

10. People say that the status quo is not stable, but in fact the status quo here is the most stable in the entire Middle East. A final status plan needs to look like the status quo – only official, organized, and not temporary.

In conclusion, Kontorovich wanted to give our readers the following message:

Don’t believe the Middle East experts and professionals on the peace process. Anyone who served in the State Department for the past 30 years is thought of as an expert on the peace process. But he also failed consistently in bringing peace, and you should only take him with a grain of salt. These experts did not anticipate any of the most significant events that happened in the Middle East, including the Arab Spring. They thought that it would all end with democracy, but look what’s happening today. They’ve already failed, so why believe them?

A version of this interview first appeared in Hebrew in Makor Rishon on March 23, 2018.

Professor Eugene Kontorovich is the head of the international law department of the Kohelet Policy Forum and a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He teaches at the Law Faculty of Northwestern University. Born in Ukraine, Professor Kontorovich spent most of his adult life in the United States. Several years ago, he moved to Israel with his family.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Visited the rest of Hebron? Two messages for Michelle Goldberg @michelleinbklyn, @NYTimes writer - by Elder of Ziyon

Goldberg's knowledge of the facts is not based on first hand knowledge, but on anti-Israel propaganda that she uses to choose her facts. Which is pretty much how the New York Times works to begin with.

Elder of Ziyon..
29 January '18..

Recently, Bill Maher had on his program defended Donald Trump's acceptance of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. A freewheeling discussion followed, and Maher's main detractor was Michelle Goldberg, a writer for the New York Times.

Here is one part:

BILL MAHER, HBO: Okay, while we're near the Middle East let me ask about a big story that happened while we were off in December. Donald Trump: 'Today we finally acknowledge the obvious that Jerusalem is Israel's capital.' He said that Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like any other sovereign nation to determine its own capital.

I hate to agree with Donald Trump, but it doesn't happen often, but I do. I don't know why Israel -- it has been their capital since 1949, it is where their government is. They've won all the wars thrown against them. I don't understand why they don't get to have their capital where they want.

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, NEW YORK TIMES: Really, you don't understand that?

MAHER: I understand there are repercussions.

GOLDBERG: First of all, when you win a war you don't get to take the other side's land.

RICK WILSON: Actually, you do.

MAHER: Actually, you do.

GOLDBERG: Under international law, you can't.

MAHER: Especially because they were attacked.

Maher is mostly correct. Professor Eugene Konotorovich has looked at international law manuals written before 1967 and found that at least half of them said that acquisition of territory in a defensive war is legal.

The idea is logical - if it was illegal to acquire territory in self-defense, then attackers who don't care about international law have no disincentive to attack another nation again and again until they defeat them. Especially a nation that has no defensive depth to speak of.

While Goldberg might be able to find a legal interpretation that says that it is illegal, she would have a hard time finding places where such a law has actually been applied.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Let's talk about the 'occupation' - by Dror Eydar

...And now a point to think about: From the Palestinian perspective, an occupation is a colonialist project by a foreign political group that came from the outside with Western assistance and took over another nation by determining state laws and systems. I know of a country like that: Jordan. Jordan's King Abdullah I was born in Hejaz (today in Saudi Arabia). The sweet British gave him the eastern Transjordan as compensation for the Hashemite family's war against the Ottomans. And so they tore away four-fifths of the mandate territory designated for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
30 December '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=39169

1. Let's talk about the occupation. Both about the occupation of territory, and about control over another nation. As I have already expressed several times, in my view the heart of the internal Israeli conflict is not control over another nation, but specifically sovereignty over those swathes of the land -- Samaria, Judea and Jerusalem -- whose symbolic weight goes beyond their existence as geographic territory.

This is the question of all questions that has been driving us crazy since our return to history as a living nation with a political claim: Who are we? The question of our identity, which is made up of two parts that formed within us over thousands of years: nationality and religion. The widespread Israeli discourse (which impacts the global discourse) almost always favors the occupation and its consequences.

There are three types of occupation in the western side of the Jordan River. Since the Oslo Accords, we do not rule over the Palestinians as in the past. They enjoy broad autonomy: government, budgets, security forces, foreign relations, a flag and an anthem. Israel does not intervene and does not even control the constant incitement in the Palestinian education and political systems against everything Israeli and Jewish. It is true that the IDF and the Shin Bet security agency are stationed along the perimeter and control movement in the territory. The simple reason: Without a buffer of security, the Palestinian Authority would turn into a major terror zone that will, from the top of the mountain, threaten Israel's population centers and vital arteries.

The Palestinians also enjoy the buffer of security. A glance at the countries around us is enough to make one understand that a similar fate will befall the Palestinian Authority the moment Israel removes its defenses. Hamas is strong in the Palestinian street, and Islamic State, al-Qaida and all manner of evil sleeper cells are awaiting the signal to take over the territory. WikiLeaks documents published a few years ago showed that, behind the scenes, the Palestinians are demanding our protection. Senior officials told me that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would not survive for an hour without our protection. By the way, neither would King Abdullah II of Jordan.

2. When it comes to Israel, the concept of "occupation" expands a lot. It is clear to everyone that since the summer of 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the situation there is completely different from what it was before. Israel has completely withdrawn, demolished its settlements and taken its dead, just as Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish suggested in his famous poem. And still, the Left and part of the world insist: The occupation is ongoing.

Much to our grief, the warning of the Right came to fruition. The moment that Hamas took control, the Gaza Strip became enslaved (not always at the residents' will) to the near-sole motive for the existence of the political Palestinian: the destruction of Israel. There are many paths to achieving this goal: military, terrorist, diplomatic. The PLO's "Phased Plan" is no fairy tale; it is alive and kicking. Go to the Palestinian Media Watch and Middle East Media Research Institute websites and see for yourself. Do not rely on intermediaries.

As a result, Israel keeps watch over the entry of goods into the Gaza Strip, so that weapons and explosives are not brought in. Experience teaches us that the moment the checkpoints are removed, the Gaza Strip will become a ticking time bomb. The Hamas government has no greater goal than sacrificing its subjects in exchange for a fatal attack in Israel and the killing of Jews. Read the Hamas charter (available online) that serves even now as the movement's manifesto. It is a Nazi document. And so, the "occupation" continues in Gaza too.

Surprise? At the U.N., Only Israel Is an ‘Occupying Power’ - by Eugene Kontorovich/Penny Grunseid

...Our findings don’t merely quantify the U.N.’s double standard. The evidence shows that the organization’s claim to represent the interest of international justice is hollow, because the U.N. has no interest in battling injustice unless Israel is the country accused.

Eugene Kontorovich/Penny Grunseid..
Wall St. Journal..
13 September '16..
Link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/at-the-u-n-only-israel-is-an-occupying-power-1473808544

The United Nations began its annual session this week, and Israel will be prominent on the agenda. Many fear the Security Council may consider a resolution setting definite territorial parameters, and a deadline, for the creation of a Palestinian state.

President Obama has hinted that in the final months of his term, he may reverse the traditional U.S. policy of vetoing such resolutions. The General Assembly, meanwhile, is likely to act as the chorus in this drama, reciting its yearly litany of resolutions criticizing Israel.

If Mr. Obama is seeking to leave his mark on the Israeli-Arab conflict—and outside the negotiated peace process that began in Oslo—there is no worse place to do it than the U.N. New research we have conducted shows that the U.N.’s focus on Israel not only undermines the organization’s legitimacy regarding the Jewish state. It also has apparently made the U.N. blind to the world’s many situations of occupation and settlements.

Our research shows that the U.N. uses an entirely different rhetoric and set of legal concepts when dealing with Israel compared with situations of occupation or settlements world-wide. For example, Israel is referred to as the “Occupying Power” 530 times in General Assembly resolutions. Yet in seven major instances of past or present prolonged military occupation—Indonesia in East Timor, Turkey in northern Cyprus, Russia in areas of Georgia, Morocco in Western Sahara, Vietnam in Cambodia, Armenia in areas of Azerbaijan, and Russia in Ukraine’s Crimea—the number is zero. The U.N. has not called any of these countries an “Occupying Power.” Not even once.

International law or the expression of an opinion under the guise of legal pretexts? by Dror Eydar

To argue that the Palestinian demand for a Judenrein state -- clean of every Jew living in Judea and Samaria -- stems from a fight over territory, is both wrong and irresponsible. When this claim comes from highly regarded Israelis, it also provides our enemies a sword with which to justify their war against us. Ethnic cleansing? You be the judge.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
13 September '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17181

The Left, which loves to brandish the "international law" argument while pointing to the obvious legal "consensus" over the settlement enterprise, which it opposes, believes the demand to evict Jews from Judea and Samaria within the framework of a peace deal is justified, rather than ethnic cleansing. But does this consensus really exist?

Even in the early 1970s, Judge Stephen Schwebel, who would later serve as president of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, argued that Israel was within its rights to hold onto the territory it had seized during the Six-Day War in 1967. His argument was based on the assessment that the war was a matter of self-defense for Israel. Schwebel said that because the original danger had not dissipated, from Israel's perspective, holding (even if not fully annexing) the land was justified, valid and that any change was dependent on resolving the conflict through peaceful avenues. Moreover, Schwebel argued that in cases where the previous sovereign (Jordan) seized the territory unlawfully (the world did not recognize Jordanian sovereignty in Judea and Samaria), then the rights of the new country -- which took control of the land through the legal action of self-defense (Israel) -- supersede the rights of the previous country. Professor Eli Lauterpacht from Cambridge, Professor Eugene Rostow from Yale and other esteemed jurists also concurred. A "consensus," you say?

Last week, Northwestern University School of Law published a comprehensive research paper entitled "Unsettled: A Global Study of Settlements in Occupied Territory." Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an international law expert, examined all the cases throughout modern history of settling in conquered territories and how those conflicts were resolved. Evidently, in no instance after World War II and the signing of the Geneva Conventions in 1949 did the international community accept the demand to vacate people who had already settled in an area as a condition for peace or independence. When East Timor requested independence from Indonesian occupation, its representatives did not condition their desired independence on the eviction of Indonesian settlers. In the negotiations between Cyprus and Turkey, the peace accord wasn't conditioned on making every Turkish settler leave the island. When Vietnam conquered Cambodia, a million settlers followed. In the Paris talks in 1990, the mediating countries rejected outright the demand to evict the Vietnamese settlers. During World War II, millions of Russians followed in the wake of the Soviet Union's occupation of Baltic countries. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, those countries did not condition their independence on evicting Russian settlers. Other cases are currently being thoroughly debated (Western Sahara and Morocco, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria and Lebanon, Russia and Georgia, and Russia and Crimea).

In each case, when the international community asked the occupying force to withdraw, it referred only to the army, not the population that settled in the area. The only exception has been Israel. And we still haven't mentioned the Jewish people's justified claim -- historically, legally and religiously -- to these lands, the cradle of our nationhood and religion, here thousands of years before Islam and Christianity came into this world and certainly before anyone ever heard of a Palestinian nation. The Palestinian demand is unprecedented in the history of the modern world and proves it has nothing to do with peace.

Question. Would forcing Jews out of Judea and Samaria be ethnic cleansing? - by Elder of Ziyon

...Applying these standards to Judea and Samaria, Human Rights Watch would have to admit that the Jews who moved there voluntarily and built their own homes - which is nearly all of them - have the right to stay in their homes since there is no other claimant. But being the hypocrites that they are, Human Rights Watch would never, ever say this about Jews in Judea.

Elder of Ziyon..
11 September '16..

Leftist Israelis and many Westerners are upset an Binyain Netanyahu's video where he said that a Palestinian state that would include no Jews in Judea and Samaria would be practicing ethnic cleansing.



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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The creation of an artificial international law that applies only to Israel?

...It isn't just double standards. It is that the international community has created an artificial international law to apply only to Israel, even though that law simply doesn't exist in other contexts. Not that it exists and is ignored - it doesn't exist.

Elder of Ziyon..
09 September '16..

Professor Eugene Kontorovich has just published an incredibly-well researched paper that looks at the legality of settlement activity in occupied territories from a completely new angle.

The paper takes an exhaustive look at every known example of belligerent occupation in modern times, and finds that for any occupation of more than a few years, settlement activity is a part of the occupation. Kontorovich summarizes his paper this way:

First, the migration of people into occupied territory is a near-ubiquitous feature of extended belligerent occupations. Second, no occupying power has ever taken any measures to discourage or prevent such settlement activity, nor has any occupying power ever expressed opinio juris suggesting that it is bound to do so. Third, and perhaps most strikingly, in none of these situations have the international community or international organizations described the migration of persons into the occupied territory as a violation of Art. 49(6). Even in the rare cases in which such policies have met with international criticism, it has not been in legal terms. This suggests that the level of direct state involvement in “transfer” required to constitute an Art. 49(6) violation may be significantly greater than previously thought. Finally, neither international political bodies nor the new governments of previously occupied territories have ever embraced the removal of illegally transferred civilian settlers as an appropriate remedy.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Recycled Outrage in the Peace Camp

...Part of the problem is the permanent industry of European-funded settlement snoops. They count every new shack and every new permit (whereas ironically the EU has a limited grasp on how many Turkish settlers are on its own territory). They will not be silent simply for lack of what to report. One wonders if they will be even silent if all their political demands were realized, or whether they would, as has happened in Gaza, define occupation down.

Eugene Kontorovich..
Commentary Magazine..
02 October '14..

Defining “settlements” has always been difficult. The relevant international law instruments speak only of people being “transferred or deported” by an occupying power. However, most Jews in the West Bank have not been moved there by the Israeli government (that is why they are called settlers, not transferees and deportees).

But recent months have seen an unprecedented broadening of the concept of settlement activity to include things that do not involve Jews moving and, in this week’s dust-up, things that have already happened. The peace camp has been defining settlements down.

The Israeli government has not issued new authorizations for the building of new homes in the “settlements” since before the collapse of negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas. Even Peace Now grudgingly concedes a “semi-freeze.” Yet the absence of new tenders creates a problem for peace processors: they traditionally blame any foot-dragging by Abbas on these tenders, and insist that if Israel desisted, the primary obstacles to fruitful negotiations would be removed.

Yet as the moratorium grows longer, Abbas has, contrary to peace-process predictions, only moved farther away from negotiations. Indeed, he has fully adopted a new strategy of using international pressure to give him his demands without the trouble of having to make compromises.

Unable to blame “new settlement activity,” the peace camp, uncritically parroted by the media, has defined settlements down. Anything is now called “new” settlement activity. Last month, Peace Now treated a surveying decision that certain lands were not owned by private parties–Jewish or Arab–as a massive outrage, though the technical and administrative action would not result in a single hut being built for a single Jew.

The recurring question. Is Gaza legally occupied by Israel? No.

...In short, anyone who claims Israel occupies Gaza is making an argument that no one has ever made in respect to occupation anywhere else in the world. It proves yet again that when it comes to Israel, the very definitions of words are uniquely different for Israel.

Elder of Ziyon..
29 July '14..

A number of so-called "fact checks" have been written that claim (among other things) that Israel legally occupies Gaza.

This is a topic I have discussed many times, so here are the highlights.

The Hague Conventions definition of 1907 is the only legal definition of occupation. That's it. The Fourth Geneva Conventions does not define it at all.

And here it is:

Art. 42. Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.

The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.

Amnesty International expanded on this definition when the US invaded Iraq:

The sole criterion for deciding the applicability of the law on belligerent occupation is drawn from facts: the de facto effective control of territory by foreign armed forces coupled with the possibility to enforce their decisions, and the de facto absence of a national governmental authority in effective control. If these conditions are met for a given area, the law on belligerent occupation applies. Even though the objective of the military campaign may not be to control territory, the sole presence of such forces in a controlling position renders applicable the law protecting the inhabitants. The occupying power cannot avoid its responsibilities as long as a national government is not in a position to carry out its normal tasks.

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There is (almost) no such thing in international law as "illegal occupation"

Elder of Ziyon
16 November '10

You know how you are always reading that Israel is "illegally occupying" territories?

The phrase is used all the time, even by the UN.

And it is not true - even if you believe that Israel is occupying territory and that it is not "disputed."

International law recognizes occupation as a descriptive state. Sometimes it is called "belligerent occupation." But by definition, any occupation is by default legal. The acts that an occupying power perform can be illegal under Geneva, but the legality of the occupation itself is not addressed in either the Geneva Conventions or the 1907 Hague Conventions, the only two sources of international law for occupation.

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Amnesty International And Human Rights Watch: When It Comes To "Occupation," They Keep Two Sets Of Books

Daled Amos
29 June '10

Elder of Zion has been all over this, both in regards to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.When it comes to anyone else, "Occupation" is defined as physically occupying an area. However, when dealing with Israel, which has withdrawn completely from Gaza, both Amnesty International and HRW apply new definitions of the term.

Take HRW, for example. In examining the Russian invasion of Georgia, HRW writes:

Russia is bound by the law of occupation wherever it exercises effective control within the territory of Georgia without the consent of the Georgian state. Anywhere Georgian authorities are prevented from their full and free exercise of sovereignty - such as denying access for Georgian authorities including law enforcement and military forces - because of Russian presence, Russia is assuming the role of an occupying power for the purposes of international humanitarian law, and all its obligations towards the civilian population remain.

If Russia exercises effective control of access to an area, such as a so-called buffer zone, even if it grants access to some authorities, for example, Georgian police, it is still bound by its obligations to the civilian population to ensure public safety and welfare and permit humanitarian access.[emphasis added]
In the first paragraph, dealing with straight occupation, Human Rights Watch clearly defines occupation in terms of physical presence that denies "free exercise of sovereignty".

According to that definition, Israel--which has no presence in Gaza and does not deny Hamas sovereign control over the area--is not an occupying area. The second paragraph, while vague, is apparently talking about controlling from within the country, which again is not applicable here--besides which, Israel allows tons of aid into Gaza each day, and will now be allowing even more.

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