Israel Urged to Apply Geneva Convention to West Bank and Gaza.

By VOA News & IsraelNationalNews.com

Israel's attorney general is urging the government to apply an international convention governing the treatment of civilians in occupied territory to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. His recommendation says the government should

Israel has refused to apply the convention to the West Bank or Gaza, arguing that they were not sovereign territories before their capture in the 1967 war. This means that for the first time, Israel would formally agree that Yesha is in fact occupied territory.

International Law Prof. Talia Einhorn said that Attorney-General Meni Mazuz's position could have far-reaching ramifications. She said it could pave the way for the international community to negate Israel's claim to the Old City of Jerusalem and other Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Ramat Eshkol, Pisgat Ze'ev and Gilo. Applying the Geneva Charter would mean that Israel is not permitted to house its citizens in Yesha - and could even give such residents the international status of "war criminals."

She recently wrote, "Up until 1948, Judea, Samaria and Gaza were a part of the British Mandate. In the 1948 War of Independence, Egypt illegally grabbed the Gaza Strip, and Jordan took Judea and Samaria, the 'West Bank.' Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza, but Jordan deigned, in 1950, to annex Judea and Samaria. This annexation was not recognized by international law. The Arab nations objected to it, and only Britain and Pakistan recognized it - and Britain did not recognize the annexation of eastern Jerusalem. In 1967, after the Six Day War, these territories - which were originally meant for the Jewish Nation's National Home according to the Mandate Charter - returned to Israeli control.

"According to international law," Einhorn wrote, "Israel has full right to try to populate the entire Land of Israel with dense Jewish settlement, and thus actualize the principles set by the League of Nations in the original Mandate Charter of San Remo in 1920. At that time, the mandate for the Land of Israel was granted to the British, and the introduction to the mandate charter stated clearly that it was based on the international recognition of the historic ties between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. Clause II of that mandate charges Britain with 'ensuring the existence of political, administrative, and economic conditions that will guarantee the establishment of the Jewish national home in the Land of Israel.'"

Einhorn said that there is nothing in international law that requires a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean - not even the UN Partition Resolution of Nov. 29, 1947. That resolution states that "independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem" shall come into existence in Palestine.

However, Einhorn noted the widely-overlooked fact that the introduction to the resolution states specifically that it is merely a "recommendation" and nothing more: "[The General Assembly] recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future Government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union set out below."

The fact that the Arab states did not accept the Partition Plan, explained Einhorn, voids the recommendation of any legal basis. She further wrote that Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for negotiations and a "withdrawal from territories" (not "withdrawal from the territories") captured in 1967, are similarly "recommendations." These resolutions were drawn up under the UN Charter's Clause VI, which deals with non-mandatory recommendations - as opposed to Clause VII resolutions, "which are mandatory, and which deal with a threat to world peace, such as those taken earlier this year against Iraq."