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From "Occupied Territories" to "Disputed Territories"

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  • From "Occupied Territories" to "Disputed Territories"

    FROM "OCCUPIED TERRITORIES" TO "DISPUTED TERRITORIES"

    Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Israel
    Aug. 7, 2006

    Dore Gold

    "Occupation" as an Accusation / The Terminology of Other Territorial
    Disputes / No Previously-Recognized Sovereignty in the Territories /
    Aggression vs. Self-Defense / Israeli Rights in the Territories /
    After Oslo, Can the Territories be Characterized as "Occupied"?

    "Occupation" as an Accusation

    At the heart of the Palestinian diplomatic struggle against Israel is
    the repeated assertion that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza
    Strip are resisting "occupation." Speaking recently on CNN's Larry King
    Weekend, Hanan Ashrawi hoped that the U.S. war on terrorism would lead
    to new diplomatic initiatives to address its root "causes." She then
    went on to specifically identify "the occupation which has gone on too
    long" as an example of one of terrorism's sources.1 In other words,
    according to Ashrawi, the violence of the intifada emanates from the
    "occupation."

    Mustafa Barghouti, president of the Palestinian Medical Relief
    Committees and a frequent guest on CNN as well, similarly asserted
    that: "the root of the problem is Israeli occupation."2 Writing in
    the Washington Post on January 16, 2002, Marwan Barghouti, head of
    Arafat's Fatah PLO faction in the West Bank, continued this theme with
    an article entitled: "Want Security? End the Occupation." This has
    become the most ubiquitous line of argument today among Palestinian
    spokesmen, who have to contend with the growing international consensus
    against terrorism as a political instrument.

    This language and logic have also penetrated the diplomatic
    struggles in the United Nations. During August 2001, a Palestinian
    draft resolution at the UN Security Council repeated the commonly
    used Palestinian reference to the West Bank and Gaza Strip as
    "occupied Palestinian territories." References to Israel's "foreign
    occupation" also appeared in the Durban Draft Declaration of the UN
    World Conference Against Racism. The Libyan ambassador to the United
    Nations, in the name of the Arab Group Caucus, reiterated on October 1,
    2001, what Palestinian spokesmen had been saying on network television:
    "The Arab Group stresses its determination to confront any attempt
    to classify resistance to occupation as an act of terrorism."3

    Three clear purposes seem to be served by the repeated references to
    "occupation" or "occupied Palestinian territories." First, Palestinian
    spokesmen hope to create a political context to explain and even
    justify the Palestinians' adoption of violence and terrorism during
    the current intifada. Second, the Palestinian demand of Israel to "end
    the occupation" does not leave any room for territorial compromise in
    the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as suggested by the original language
    of UN Security Council Resolution 242 (see below).

    Third, the use of "occupied Palestinian territories" denies any
    Israeli claim to the land: had the more neutral language of "disputed
    territories" been used, then the Palestinians and Israel would be on
    an even playing field with equal rights. Additionally, by presenting
    Israel as a "foreign occupier," advocates of the Palestinian cause
    can delegitimize the Jewish historical attachment to Israel. This
    has become a focal point of Palestinian diplomatic efforts since the
    failed 2000 Camp David Summit, but particularly since the UN Durban
    Conference in 2001. Indeed, at Durban, the delegitimization campaign
    against Israel exploited the language of "occupation" in order to
    invoke the memories of Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War
    and link them to Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.4

    The Terminology of Other Territorial Disputes The politically-loaded
    term "occupied territories" or "occupation" seems to apply only
    to Israel and is hardly ever used when other territorial disputes
    are discussed, especially by interested third parties. For example,
    the U.S. Department of State refers to Kashmir as "disputed areas."5
    Similarly in its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the State
    Department describes the patch of Azerbaijan claimed as an independent
    republic by indigenous Armenian separatists as "the disputed area
    of Nagorno-Karabakh."6

    Despite the 1975 advisory opinion of the International Court of
    Justice establishing that Western Sahara was not under Moroccan
    territorial sovereignty, it is not commonly accepted to describe the
    Moroccan military incursion in the former Spanish colony as an act of
    "occupation." In a more recent decision of the International Court
    of Justice from March 2001, the Persian Gulf island of Zubarah,
    claimed by both Qatar and Bahrain, was described by the Court as
    "disputed territory," until it was finally allocated to Qatar.7

    Of course each situation has its own unique history, but in a variety
    of other territorial disputes from northern Cyprus, to the Kurile
    Islands, to Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf -- which have involved some
    degree of armed conflict -- the term "occupied territories" is not
    commonly used in international discourse.8

    Thus, the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip appears to be a special
    exception in recent history, for in many other territorial disputes
    since the Second World War, in which the land in question was under the
    previous sovereignty of another state, the term "occupied territory"
    has not been applied to the territory that had come under one side's
    military control as a result of armed conflict.

    No Previously-Recognized Sovereignty in the Territories Israel entered
    the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli legal
    experts traditionally resisted efforts to define the West Bank and
    Gaza Strip as "occupied" or falling under the main international
    treaties dealing with military occupation. Former Chief Justice of
    the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote in the 1970s that there is no
    de jure applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention regarding
    occupied territories to the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
    since the Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a
    sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign."

    In fact, prior to 1967, Jordan had occupied the West Bank and Egypt
    had occupied the Gaza Strip; their presence in those territories
    was the result of their illegal invasion in 1948, in defiance of
    the UN Security Council. Jordan's 1950 annexation of the West Bank
    was recognized only by Great Britain (excluding the annexation of
    Jerusalem) and Pakistan, and rejected by the vast majority of the
    international community, including the Arab states.

    At Jordan's insistence, the 1949 Armistice Line, that constituted
    the Israeli-Jordanian boundary until 1967, was not a recognized
    international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice
    Agreement specifically stated: "no provision of this Agreement shall
    in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either
    Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions,
    the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military
    considerations" (emphasis added) (Article II.2).

    As noted above, in many other cases in recent history in which
    recognized international borders were crossed in armed conflicts and
    sovereign territory seized, the language of "occupation" was not used
    -- even in clear-cut cases of aggression. Yet in the case of the
    West Bank and Gaza, where no internationally recognized sovereign
    control previously existed, the stigma of Israel as an "occupier"
    has gained currency.

    Aggression vs. Self-Defense International jurists generally draw
    a distinction between situations of "aggressive conquest" and
    territorial disputes that arise after a war of self-defense. Former
    State Department Legal Advisor Stephen Schwebel, who later headed the
    International Court of Justice in the Hague, wrote in 1970 regarding
    Israel's case: "Where the prior holder of territory had seized that
    territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory
    in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder,
    better title."9

    Here the historical sequence of events on June 5, 1967, is critical,
    for Israel only entered the West Bank after repeated Jordanian
    artillery fire and ground movements across the previous armistice
    lines. Jordanian attacks began at 10:00 a.m.; an Israeli warning to
    Jordan was passed through the UN at 11:00 a.m.; Jordanian attacks
    nonetheless persisted, so that Israeli military action only began at
    12:45 p.m. Additionally, Iraqi forces had crossed Jordanian territory
    and were poised to enter the West Bank. Under such circumstances,
    the temporary armistice boundaries of 1949 lost all validity the
    moment Jordanian forces revoked the armistice and attacked. Israel
    thus took control of the West Bank as a result of a defensive war.

    The language of "occupation" has allowed Palestinian spokesmen to
    obfuscate this history. By repeatedly pointing to "occupation," they
    manage to reverse the causality of the conflict, especially in front of
    Western audiences. Thus, the current territorial dispute is allegedly
    the result of an Israeli decision "to occupy," rather than a result
    of a war imposed on Israel by a coalition of Arab states in 1967.

    Israeli Rights in the Territories Under UN Security Council Resolution
    242 from November 22, 1967 -- that has served as the basis of the 1991
    Madrid Conference and the 1993 Declaration of Principles -- Israel is
    only expected to withdraw "from territories" to "secure and recognized
    boundaries" and not from "the territories" or "all the territories"
    captured in the Six-Day War. This deliberate language resulted
    from months of painstaking diplomacy. For example, the Soviet Union
    attempted to introduce the word "all" before the word "territories"
    in the British draft resolution that became Resolution 242. Lord
    Caradon, the British UN ambassador, resisted these efforts.10 Since
    the Soviets tried to add the language of full withdrawal but failed,
    there is no ambiguity about the meaning of the withdrawal clause
    contained in Resolution 242, which was unanimously adopted by the UN
    Security Council.

    Thus, the UN Security Council recognized that Israel was entitled
    to part of these territories for new defensible borders. Britain's
    foreign secretary in 1967, George Brown, stated three years
    later that the meaning of Resolution 242 was "that Israel will not
    withdraw from all the territories."11 Taken together with UN Security
    Council Resolution 338, it became clear that only negotiations would
    determine which portion of these territories would eventually become
    "Israeli territories" or territories to be retained by Israel's
    Arab counterpart.

    Actually, the last international legal allocation of territory that
    includes what is today the West Bank and Gaza Strip occurred with the
    1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which recognized Jewish
    national rights in the whole of the Mandated territory: "recognition
    has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with
    Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home
    in that country." The members of the League of Nations did not create
    the rights of the Jewish people, but rather recognized a pre-existing
    right, that had been expressed by the 2,000-year-old quest of the
    Jewish people to re-establish their homeland.

    Moreover, Israel's rights were preserved under the United Nations
    as well, according to Article 80 of the UN Charter, despite the
    termination of the League of Nations in 1946. Article 80 established
    that nothing in the UN Charter should be "construed to alter in
    any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or
    the terms of existing international instruments." These rights were
    unaffected by UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 1947 --
    the Partition Plan -- which was a non-binding recommendation that
    was rejected, in any case, by the Palestinians and the Arab states.

    Given these fundamental sources of international legality, Israel
    possesses legal rights with respect to the West Bank and Gaza Strip
    that appear to be ignored by those international observers who repeat
    the term "occupied territories" without any awareness of Israeli
    territorial claims. Even if Israel only seeks "secure boundaries"
    that cover part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, there is a world
    of difference between a situation in which Israel approaches the
    international community as a "foreign occupier" with no territorial
    rights, and one in which Israel has strong historical rights to the
    land that were recognized by the main bodies serving as the source
    of international legitimacy in the previous century.

    After Oslo, Can the Territories be Classified as "Occupied"? In the
    1980s, President Carter's State Department legal advisor, Herbert
    Hansell, sought to shift the argument over occupation from the land to
    the Palestinians who live there. He determined that the 1949 Fourth
    Geneva Convention governing military occupation applied to the West
    Bank and Gaza Strip since its paramount purpose was "protecting
    the civilian population of an occupied territory."12 Hansell's
    legal analysis was dropped by the Reagan and Bush administrations;
    nonetheless, he had somewhat shifted the focus from the territory
    to its populace. Yet here, too, the standard definitions of what
    constitutes an occupied population do not easily fit, especially
    since the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Agreements.

    Under Oslo, Israel transferred specific powers from its military
    government in the West Bank and Gaza to the newly created Palestinian
    Authority. Already in 1994, the legal advisor to the International Red
    Cross, Dr. Hans-Peter Gasser, concluded that his organization had no
    reason to monitor Israeli compliance with the Fourth Geneva Convention
    in the Gaza Strip and Jericho area, since the Convention no longer
    applied with the advent of Palestinian administration in those areas.13

    Upon concluding the Oslo II Interim Agreement in September 1995,
    which extended Palestinian administration to the rest of the West Bank
    cities, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres declared: "once the agreement
    will be implemented, no longer will the Palestinians reside under
    our domination. They will gain self-rule and we shall return to
    our heritage."14

    Since that time, 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the West
    Bank and Gaza Strip has come under Palestinian jurisdiction.15 Israel
    transferred 40 spheres of civilian authority, as well as responsibility
    for security and public order, to the Palestinian Authority, while
    retaining powers for Israel's external security and the security of
    Israeli citizens.

    The 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 6) states that the
    Occupying Power would only be bound to its terms "to the extent that
    such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory."
    Under the earlier 1907 Hague Regulations, as well, a territory can
    only be considered occupied when it is under the effective and actual
    control of the occupier. Thus, according to the main international
    agreements dealing with military occupation, Israel's transfer of
    powers to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Agreements has
    made it difficult to continue to characterize the West Bank and Gaza
    as occupied territories.

    Israel has been forced to exercise its residual powers in recent
    months only in response to the escalation of violence and armed
    attacks instigated by the Palestinian Authority.16 Thus, any increase
    in defensive Israeli military deployments today around Palestinian
    cities is the direct consequence of a Palestinian decision to escalate
    the military confrontation against Israel, and not an expression of
    a continuing Israeli occupation, as the Palestinians contend. For
    once the Palestinian leadership takes the strategic decision to put
    an end to the current wave of violence, there is no reason why the
    Israeli military presence in the West Bank and Gaza cannot return
    to its pre-September 2000 deployment, which minimally affected the
    Palestinians.

    Describing the territories as "Palestinian" may serve the political
    agenda of one side in the dispute, but it prejudges the outcome of
    future territorial negotiations that were envisioned under UN Security
    Council Resolution 242. It also represents a total denial of Israel's
    fundamental rights. Furthermore, reference to "resisting occupation"
    has simply become a ploy advanced by Palestinian and Arab spokesmen
    to justify an ongoing terrorist campaign against Israel, despite the
    new global consensus against terrorism that has been formed since
    September 11, 2001.

    It would be far more accurate to describe the West Bank and Gaza Strip
    as "disputed territories" to which both Israelis and Palestinians have
    claims. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright stated in March
    1994: "We simply do not support the description of the territories
    occupied by Israel in the 1967 War as occupied Palestinian territory."

    * * *

    Notes 1. CNN Larry King Weekend, "America Recovers: Can the Fight
    Against Terrorism be Won?," November 10, 2001 (CNN.com/transcripts).

    2. Mustafa Barghouti, "Occupation is the Problem," Al-Ahram Weekly
    Outline, December 6-12, 2001.

    3. Anne F. Bayefsky, "Terrorism and Racism: The Aftermath of Durban,"
    Jerusalem Viewpoints, no. 468, December 16, 2001.

    4. See Bayefsky, op. cit. U.S. and European officials may use the
    term "occupation" out of a concern for the humanitarian needs of the
    Palestinians, without identifying with the PLO political agenda at
    Durban or at the UN.

    5. U.S. Department of State, Consular Information Sheet: India
    (http://travel.state.gov/india.html) November 23, 2001.

    6. 1999 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Azerbaijan, Bureau
    of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State,
    February 25, 2000.

    7. Case Concerning Maritime Delimitation and Territorial Questions
    between Qatar and Bahrain, March 15, 2001, Judgment on the Merits,
    International Court of Justice, March 16, 2000, paragraph 100.

    8. The Japanese Foreign Ministry does not use the language
    of "ending the Russian occupation of the Kurile Islands,"
    but rather resolving "the Northern Territory Issue."
    (www.mofa.go.jp/region/europe/russia/ territory). U.S. Department of
    State "Background Notes" describe the Turkish Republic of Northern
    Cyprus as the island's "northern part [which is] under an autonomous
    Turkish-Cypriot administration supported by the presence of Turkish
    troops" -- not under Turkish occupation.

    9. Stephen Schwebel, "What Weight to Conquest," American Journal of
    International Law, 64 (1970):345-347.

    10. Vernon Turner, "The Intent of UNSC 242 -- The View of Regional
    Actors," in UN Security Council Resolution 242: The Building Block of
    Peacemaking (Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
    1993), p. 27.

    11. Meir Rosenne, "Legal Interpretations of UNSC242," in UN Security
    Council Resolution 242: The Building Block of Peacemaking, op. cit.,
    p. 31.

    12. Under the Carter administration, Hansell's distinction led,
    for the first time, to a U.S. determination that Israeli settlement
    activity was illegal since it purportedly contravened Article 49 of
    the Fourth Geneva Convention which stated that "the Occupying Power
    shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population
    into the territory it is occupying." Subsequently, the Reagan and Bush
    administrations altered the legal determination of the Carter period,
    changed the U.S. voting pattern at the UN, and refused to describe
    Israeli settlements as illegal, even if American political objections
    to settlement activity continued to be expressed. One reason was
    that the Fourth Geneva Convention applied to situations like that of
    Nazi-occupied Europe, which involved "forcible transfer, deportation
    or resettlement of large numbers of people." This view was formally
    stated by the U.S. Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Morris Abram, on
    February 1, 1990, who had served on the U.S. staff at the Nuremberg
    trials and, hence, was familiar with the legal intent behind the 1949
    Fourth Geneva Convention.

    13. Dr. Hans-Peter Gasser, Legal Adviser, International Committee of
    the Red Cross, "On the Applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention
    After the Declaration of Principles and the Cairo Agreement,"
    paper presented at the International Colloquium on Human Rights,
    Gaza, September 10-12, 1994. Gasser did not state that in his view
    the territories were no longer "occupied," but he did point out the
    legal complexities that had arisen with Oslo's implementation.

    14. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's Address at the Israeli-Palestinian
    Interim Agreement Signing Ceremony, Washington, D.C., September
    28, 1995.

    15. Ehud Barak, "Israel Needs a True Partner for Peace," New York
    Times, July 30, 2001.

    16. The present intifada violence resulted from a strategic decision
    taken by Yasser Arafat, as admitted by numerous Palestinian spokesmen:

    "Whoever thinks the intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon's
    visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is wrong....This intifada was planned in
    advance, ever since President Arafat's return from the Camp David
    Negotiations," admitted Palestinian Communications Minister 'Imad
    Al-Faluji (Al-Safir, March 3, 2001, trans. MEMRI). Even earlier,
    Al-Faluji had explained that the intifada was initiated as the result
    of a strategic decision made by the Palestinians (Al-Ayyam, December
    6, 2000).

    Arafat began to call for a new intifada in the first few months of
    the year 2000. Speaking before Fatah youth in Ramallah, Arafat "hinted
    that the Palestinian people are likely to turn to the intifada option"
    (Al-Mujahid, April 3, 2000).

    Marwan Barghouti, the head of Fatah in the West Bank, explained in
    early March 2000: "We must wage a battle in the field alongside of the
    negotiating battle...I mean confrontation" (Ahbar Al-Halil, March 8,
    2000). During the summer of 2000, Fatah trained Palestinian youths
    for the upcoming violence in 40 training camps.

    The July 2000 edition of Al-Shuhada monthly, distributed among the
    Palestinian Security Services, states: "From the negotiating delegation
    led by the commander and symbol, Abu Amar (Yasser Arafat) to the brave
    Palestinian people, be ready. The Battle for Jerusalem has begun." One
    month later, the commander of the Palestinian police told the official
    Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: "The Palestinian police
    will lead together with the noble sons of the Palestinian people,
    when the hour of confrontation arrives." Freih Abu Middein, the PA
    Justice Minister, warned that same month: "Violence is near and the
    Palestinian people are willing to sacrifice even 5,000 casualties"
    (Al-Hayut al-Jadida, August 24, 2000 -- MEMRI).

    Another official publication of the Palestinian Authority, Al-Sabah,
    dated September 11, 2000 -- more than two weeks before the Sharon
    visit -- declared: "We will advance and declare a general intifada
    for Jerusalem. The time for the intifada has arrived, the time for
    intifada has arrived, the time for Jihad has arrived."

    Arafat advisor Mamduh Nufal told the French Nouvel Observateur
    (March 1, 2001): "A few days before the Sharon visit to the Mosque,
    when Arafat requested that we be ready to initiate a clash, I supported
    mass demonstrations and opposed the use of firearms." Of course, Arafat
    ultimately adopted the use of firearms and bomb attacks against Israeli
    civilians and military personnel. On September 30, 2001, Nufal detailed
    in al-Ayyam that Arafat actually issued orders to field commanders
    for violent confrontations with Israel on September 28, 2000.

    * * *

    Dore Gold is President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
    Previously, he served as Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations
    (1997-1999). This Jerusalem Viewpoints is based on an earlier Jerusalem
    Issue Brief on this subject.

    http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp470.htm

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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