Israel shuns world court (ruling on the security fence)

Yedioth Ahronoth ^ | 02.23.05 | Tal Rosner

[American in Israel]

Israel's right to build the fence should be unquestionable....if it follows the Green Line.

What does a cease fire line have to do with anything?! Isreal has a perfectly good fence already, it is called a border. Anybody found with blood on their hands should be executed, the rest dropped over the fence with a catapult. What the heck is wrong with enforcing the visa laws!!! You guys (empty rock and robbypaul) remind me of Arabs, give an inch, if you can bite off a mile.

The way to peace in the Middle-East is a war, fought to the finish. It is the New Rules for Jews crap that has drug this BS on for 50 years.

[mysto]

Why have a new wall when you can have angry armed Americans?
A wall will give those "guest workers" something to work on before we send them back home... LOL

[robertpaulsen]

"I think building a wall on his property might be the lesser evil."

Any reason, any reason whatsoever, why you cannot build the wall ON the property line? Would it be any less effective?

[robertpaulsen]

Were YOU under the impression that the West Bank belonged to Israel?

The fact that even Israel refers to the West Bank as "disputed territory" has no effect on your thinking?

[robertpaulsen]

All of that says nothing about the Israeli settlements. All settlements over the Green line are illegal, as per the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israeli troop withdrawal can be negotiated, as per 242.

Amazing that zealots like you will allow the slaughter of innocents on both sides because you want to argue over the word "the". Not amazing, despicable.

Like the Israeli settlers destroying their homes in Gaza -- if they can't have them, then no one will. The Israelis and the Palestinians actually deserve each other -- as time goes on, their actions resemble one another.

[robertpaulsen]

"UN resolution 242 of talks about a partial or full TROOP withdrawal from West Bank and Gaza as part of a peace settlement.

The Israeli civilians should never have been transferred to the occupied territory. What was the reason for that, by the way? Getting crowded in Israel?

[Iscool]

This, from that article---If there's a couple of "bad apples" who turn up in the group, Gilchrist said, they will face prosecution if they step outside the law.

However, the illegal aliens that are stepping outside of the law will get the red carpet treatment...

It has to be clear to others besides me that if the intent of the gov't was to keep the illegals out, it would welcome 'free' volunteers, even if the gov't had to train them...

[dervish]

So the words "defensible borders" equal zealotry?

There was a reason the armistice lines were not the borders. As the quotes above show, repeatedly by many officials, those involved did not find the 1967 cease fire line would allow Israel to defend itself from attack.

Now to you indefensible borders, borders that allow Israel to get pushed into the sea, the stated aim of most Palistinian terrorists and numerous Arab countries, none of whom have even recognized Israel's right to exist, may be desireable. To those that care about the continued existence of Israel it is an existential question not even necessarily a religious one.

Please link the Geneva Convention which you keep claiming makes the settlements illegal.

Also you are guilty of the worst kind of moral equivalency here which I despise so our admiration for each other is equal. Destroying homes, or per you "illegal settlements," is equal to terrorists murdering cilvilians including children? They "resemble" each other because one destroys abandoned property while the other blows up live persons in cold blood?

Only if you also despise the civilians ab initio.

[American in Israel]

Lets agree to the Arabs returning to Arabia and the Hebrews returning to Hebron. Were you under the impression that the "West bank" of the Jordan river was East of the Jordan and therefor part of the Arab mandated lands? Or perhaps that the West bank was half a Nation wide, even though the river is less than ten feet wide? How come the mandate to create Arab states all stand, execept where they also create the boundrys of the Jewish state. A real have your state and eat his too kind of thing.

If the last Jew on earth was put on the dark side of the moon, and given one square meter to stand in, that to would be disputed. I don't give a rip about Arabs disputing the ownership of the world. They want it all, everywhere forever. What I care about is law, and the law clearly states that all land west of the Jordan is Israel.

Execept where disputed. In case you are interested, as your ancestors stole my land, and broke your treaties, the land you are standing on belongs to me.

White boy.

[robertpaulsen]

"those involved did not find the 1967 cease fire line would allow Israel to defend itself from attack."

What are you talking about? The 1967 cease fire line is perfectly defensible.

Now, after Israeli settlers began building settlements deep into the West Bank, certainly they're not defensible if Israeli forces stayed on their side of the Green Line.

" Please link the Geneva Convention which you keep claiming makes the settlements illegal."

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states (in part):

"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

The Fourth Geneva Convention was established at Geneva, 12 August 1949. Israel is a signatory nation to the Fourth Geneva Convention (see bottom of page).

[TMSuchman]

There is an old saying "that good fences make good neighbors".
Sounds about right with me....

[dervish]

What are you talking about? The 1967 cease fire line is perfectly defensible.

What are your credentials to make such a determination?

Many experts including the drafters and consultants on Resolution 242 did not agree with your statement. Neither did the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1967, nor President Reagan in 1982, nor did Pres Bush in his letter to PM Sharon in 2004.

Joint Chiefs of Staff on Defensible Borders

(June 29, 1967 — declassified: June 1979)

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

(JCSM-373-67)

Subject: Middle East Boundaries 1.

Reference is made to your memorandum, dated 19 June 1967, subjects as above, which requested the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, without regard to political factors, on the minimum territory, in addition to that held on 4 June 1967, Israel might be justified in retaining in order to permit a more effective defense against possible conventional Arab attack and terrorist raids. [emphasis added] 2.

From a strictly military point of view, Israel would require the retention of some captured territory in order to provide militarily defensible borders. [emphasis added] Determination of territory to be retained should be based on accepted tactical principles such as control of commanding terrain, use of natural obstacles, elimination of enemy-held salients, and provision of defense in-depth for important facilities and installations. More detailed discussions of the key border areas mentioned in the reference are contained in the Appendix hereto. In summary, the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding these areas are as follows:

a. The Jordanian West Bank. Control of the prominent high ground running north-south through the middle of West Jordan generally east of the main north-south highway along the axis Jennin-Nablus-Bira-Jerusalem and then southeast to a junction with the Dead Sea at the Wadi el Daraja would provide Israel with a militarily defensible border. The envisioned defensive line would run just east of Jerusalem....

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jt.html

and

FORMER PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: "In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again." (Address to the Nation, September 1, 1982). http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/un/242a.html

You said:

All of that says nothing about the Israeli settlements. All settlements over the Green line are illegal, as per the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states (in part):

"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

Are you Palestinian? The only people I have seen making that distorted point are Palestinians and Amnesty International. Here is why:

As Gorali notes, the current assertion that the settlements are illegal is based on the paragraph (6) of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which provides that "The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territory it occupies." However under Article 2, the Convention applies only "to cases of occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, by another such Party". The result is that, since the Territories do not belong to any other sovereign state, Israel is not an occupying Power within the meaning of the Convention, which simply does not apply.

It is also significant that the aim of the Fourth Geneva Convention is to provide humanitarian protection in occupied territory. Article 49 contributes to this aim by outlawing the forceful deportation or transfer of unwilling populations. This does not apply to the settlements, and no other serious humanitarian consideration of the type contemplated by the Convention arises.

It follows that charges of illegality, inflated to "war crimes", levied against the settlements, are mere propaganda.

http://www.take-a-pen.org/english/Articles/Art13122003.htm

and

International Humanitarian Law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip

International humanitarian law prohibits the forcible transfer of segments of the population of a state to the territory of another state which it has occupied as a result of the resort to armed force. This principle, which is reflected in Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, was drafted immediately following the Second World War. As International Red Cross' authoritative commentary to the Convention confirms, the principle was intended to protect the local population from displacement, including endangering its separate existence as a race, as occurred with respect to the forced population transfers in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary before and during the war. This is clearly not the case with regard to the West Bank and Gaza.

The attempt to present Israeli settlements as a violation of this principle is clearly untenable. As Professor Eugene Rostow, former Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs has written: "the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the local population to live there" (AJIL, 1990, vol. 84, p.72).

The provisions of the Geneva Convention regarding forced population transfer to occupied sovereign territory cannot be viewed as prohibiting the voluntary return of individuals to the towns and villages from which they, or their ancestors, had been ousted. Nor does it prohibit the movement of individuals to land which was not under the legitimate sovereignty of any state and which is not subject to private ownership. In this regard, Israeli settlements have been established only after an exhaustive investigation process, under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Israel, designed to ensure that no communities are established on private Arab land.

It should be emphasised that the movement of individuals to the territory is entirely voluntary, while the settlements themselves are not intended to displace Arab inhabitants, nor do they do so in practice.

Repeated charges regarding the illegality of Israeli settlements must therefore be regarded as politically motivated, without foundation in international law. Similarly, as Israeli settlements cannot be considered illegal, they cannot constitute a "grave violation" of the Geneva Convention, and hence any claim that they constitute a "war crime" is without any legal basis. Such political charges cannot justify in any way Palestinian acts of terrorism and violence against innocent Israelis.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/settlelaw.html