[Noisebridge-discuss] U.N. Panel Says Israeli Settlement Policy Violates Law

[Jake]

U.N. Panel Says Israeli Settlement Policy Violates Law

By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: January 31, 2013

GENEVA — Israel has pursued a creeping annexation of the Palestinian 
territories through the creation of Jewish settlements and committed 
multiple violations of international law, possibly including war crimes, a 
United Nations panel said on Thursday, calling for an immediate halt to 
all settlement activity and the withdrawal of all settlers.

Presenting their findings in Geneva after a nearly six-month inquiry for 
the United Nations Human Rights Council, a panel of three judges, led by 
Christine Chanet of France, said Israel’s settlements had clearly violated 
the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit a state from transferring its own 
civilian population into territory it has occupied.

Asked if Israel’s actions constituted war crimes, Ms. Chanet replied that 
its offenses fell under Article 8 of the International Criminal Court 
statute. “Article 8 of the I.C.C. statute is in the chapter of war 
crimes,” she said at a news conference. “That is the answer.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry quickly dismissed the report as 
“counterproductive and unfortunate” and said it provided a reminder of the 
Human Rights Council’s “systematically one-sided and biased approach 
towards Israel.”

Israel “must cease all settlement activities without preconditions” and 
start withdrawing all settlers from the occupied territories, the judges 
state in their report, which is due to be debated in the Human Rights 
Council in March.

The panel drew on 67 submissions from a cross section of academics, 
diplomats, Isradetermination,” the report concludes.

These actions fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal 
Court, the panel noted, and if a future Palestine state ratified the Rome 
Statute, which created the court, Israel could be called to account for 
“gross violations of human rights law and serious violations of 
international humanitarian law.”

The report was welcomed by Palestinian officials and some settlement 
opponents in Israel. Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of 
the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in a statement that it 
documented “illegal Israeli practices without any ambiguity.”

Israeli officials, on the other hand, dismissed the report, saying that 
the only way to resolve the settlement issue was through direct 
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without preconditions.

Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said that the 
council “systematically gives Israel a raw deal” and that the conclusions 
of the report were predictable. Defending Israel’s decision not to 
cooperate with the fact-finding mission, he said, “If the cards are 
marked, are we expected to play anyway?”

He criticized the report for mentioning Israel’s unilateral evacuation of 
21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank in 2005 “in 
passing in a few lines, as an insignificant detail, although it was a very 
major event for Israel. It adds insult to injury.”

The report did not explicitly call for an economic boycott of the 
settlements or sanctions against Israel, but Israel said its authors 
deliberately used language that could serve groups calling for such 
measures.

The report says, for example, that private companies that have enabled or 
and profited from the settlements “must assess the human rights impact of 
their activities and take all necessary steps — including by terminating 
their business interests in the settlements — to ensure they are not 
adversely impacting the human rights of the Palestinian people in 
conformity with international law.”

Frances Raday, an Israeli professor of law and a human rights advocate, 
told Israeli television that the report “gives unusual encouragement to 
attempts that already exist to boycott settlements and Israeli 
institutions and Israel as a state because of the settlements.”

According to the report, Palestinians’ rights to freedom of movement and 
expression, as well as their access to places of worship, education, 
water, housing and natural resources, “are being violated consistently.”

The settlements are maintained through “a system of total segregation” 
between the settlers, who enjoy a preferential legal status, and the rest 
of the population, the report concludes. The settlements have resulted in 
the creation of legal zones in which settlers are subject to Israeli laws 
but Palestinians come under a patchwork of military orders and laws dating 
back to Ottoman and British rule, the report says.

The panel also expressed its grave concern at the high number of 
Palestinian children who were detained, some for minor offenses. They were 
“invariably mistreated, denied due process and fair trial,” the report 
said, and many were transferred to detention centers in Israel, also a 
violation of international law.

The report took note of an increase in reports of settler harassment of 
Palestinian children since 2010 and criticized acts of violence and 
intimidation by settlers, including burning crops, vandalizing olive 
trees, preventing Palestinian farmers from accessing land close to 
settlements and taking over the farmers’ land.

Six months ago, an Israeli government-appointed commission of legal 
experts published a report saying Israel’s presence in the West Bank was 
not occupation and recommending that the state grant approval for scores 
of unauthorized Jewish settlement outposts there.

The three-member committee, led by Edmund Levy, a retired Israeli Supreme 
Court justice, confirmed a position long held by Israel: that the 
territories are not occupied, since Jordan’s previous hold over them was 
never internationally recognized, and that their fate must be determined 
in negotiations. Still, fearing international censure, among other things, 
the Israeli government has not formally adopted the Levy commission’s 
conclusions.