Op-Ed: Unsettling "Settlement" Lies

Naomi Chazan was deputy speaker of the Knesset and the dean of the School of Government and Society at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. Given her credentials, one would have thought that she would have a good grasp of politics and law. But in a recent article published in The Forward, she stated that “Israel’s settlement enterprise...violate[s] international law” because “colonizing occupied land is illegal [based on] the Geneva Conventions,” notwithstanding the contrary opinion expressed in “the contortions of a few right-wing legal scholars.”

Well, I am no legal scholar but I’d rather be on the side of those right-wing “contortionists”...including eminent ones, whom Ms. Chazan dismisses offhand, and whose so-called “contortions” strongly confirm the legality of the “settlements” and support the legitimate rights of Israel in Judea and Samaria:

Stephen M. Schwebel, Professor of International Law at the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University (Washington), former Deputy Legal Advisor of the U.S. State Department and President of the International Court of Justice from 1997 to 2000: "Where the prior holder of territory [Jordan] had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense [Israel] has, against that prior holder, better title.” Eugene W. Rostow, Former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and Distinguished Fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace: “The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created... The Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated...”

I'm trying not to, but 99% of the Geneva Conventions is about the treatment of soldiers captured in uniform during a time of war.

Appears to be more of a "gentleman's agreement" than a binding document with actual legal force. I can't recall an instance where it was enforced against non-Americans.

Ignorant liberals like to invoke it, thinking it will hogtie the US military and/or foreign policy.

Appears to be more of a "gentleman's agreement" than a binding document with actual legal force. I can't recall an instance where it was enforced against non-Americans.

The Geneva Convention is, by its own terms, only restricts the behavior of signatories (members) toward other signatories . Further, signatories can observe whether other signatories are generally complying with its terms; if a nation is benefiting by having other nations regard it as a signatory, then it will have a strong vested interest in ensuring that other nations continue to do so.

Further, impediments the Geneva Convention would impose to one signatory's war effort would generally be offset by the impediment imposed upon its enemies by its membership (e.g. our membership during WWII forced us to spend resources feeding and housing enemy prisoners which could otherwise have been used elsewhere in the war effort, but it also compelled Germany to do likewise, so the net effect mostly balanced). In some cases where adherence with the Convention would have seriously undermined the war effort (e.g. letting the Germans know we had captured alive the crew of the U-505), the war effort was allowed to take precedence.

I find it irksome that leftists continually cite the "Geneva Convention", notwithstanding the fact that it is in no way whatsoever applicable to the treatment of non-uniformed combatants fighting for non-signatories of the Convention.

If you’ve never seen me use another source, then you’ve missed quite a few posts of mine. I’ve never seen an instance A7 glorify Baruch Goldstein one way or the other, and if they do, I don’t hold with that. But that doesn’t mean they are not a good source of daily news on Israel.

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