Letter to The Guardian on the legality of Israeli settlements

The British government has issued a statement reminding UK citizens of the illegality of Israeli settlements (more properly described as colonies) in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The statement is intended as a note of caution for any Britons intending to buy land in and/or emigrate to those territories, but of course it also holds political significance since Israel's refusal to recognise the illegality of its behaviour, relinquish its hold on the territories and return to its own legal borders is the primary obstacle both to a peace settlement with the Palestinians and to Palestinian self-determination.

This is a welcome, if extremely mild rebuke from a British government which has otherwise backed Israel in the most cynical ways in recent years. It is also highly offensive to apologists for Israeli crimes, who appear unable to reconcile themselves with a fundamental tenent of common morality - that theft is wrong - and the related, fundamental tenent of international law: that the acquisition of territory by force is forbidden. Hence this letter to the Guardian from the Zionist Federation which sets out the argument that, well, theft is both right and legal, at least when Israel does it. My response is below. The Guardian didn't publish my letter, but they did publish some rather good ones making broadly the same points.

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Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation asserts that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not occupied territories under international law. Does he know something that the International Court of Justice does not?

In 2004, the court stated that, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, "territory is considered occupied when it is ... placed under the aurthority of [a] hostile army...The territories situated between the Green Line...and the former eastern boundary of Palestine under the Mandate were occupied by Israel in 1967 during the armed conflict between Israel and Jordan. Under customary international law, these were therefore occupied territories in which Israel had the status of occupying Power. Subsequent events in these territories...have done nothing to alter this situation." (pg67, para 78)

In respect of Israeli colonisation, Hoffman claims that the Geneva Convention only applies to forced population transfer and not to Israelis settling in the occupied territories of their own free will. In fact, the Court stated that the Fourth Geneva Convention "prohibits not only deportations or forced transfers of population such as those carried out during the Second World War, but also any measures taken by an occupying Power in order to organize or encourage transfers of parts of its own population into the occupied territory" and that Israeli colonisation of the occupied territories is also, therefore, illegal. (p99 para120)

Last month the UN General Assembly voted 164-7 in favour of a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on compliance with international law (in the rejectionist camp were Israel, the United States, Australia, and four South Pacific island nations). Yet Hoffman claims that "the UK government risks encouraging extremists" by taking a view of the status of the Israeli settlements that accords with the opinion of the highest judicial body on the planet and the overwhelming majority of the world's nation states. Aren't the real extremists those, like Hoffman, who attempt to formulate torturous, self-serving arguments in defence of armed conquest and straightforward theft?

David Wearing
London

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Readers who want to get involved in the effort to end the conflict and the repression of the Palestinians please note: the International Court of Justice's opinion of 2004 is your friend. It is possibly the most important document on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today. It demolishes Israel's arguments in favour of continued colonisation and sets out the legal (as well as the moral) basis for a just solution to the conflict. Ultimately, Israel's reprehensible behaviour will only be ended in the same way that the South African Apartheid system was ended: through a popular effort by the repressed people themselves and their supporters worldwide to win the argument on the issues and the facts, thereby making the repressor's position politically untenable. In this moral, political and popular struggle, the ICJ opinion is possibly our greatest weapon. Read it, learn the arguments, and use it whenever possible.