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Peace Process

Gov?t says Yesha under belligerent occupation


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
March 23, 2005

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon this week insisted Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip (Yesha) were under belligerent Israeli occupation as it worked to thwart a High Court petition by Jewish settlers stating their rights were to be violated by the “disengagement” plan.

The Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria insist their basic human right to live where they choose without regard to religion or race would be violated when Sharon’s government comes to forcibly uproot them this summer.

But state representatives Osnat Mandel and Yuval Roitman wrote that "the areas of Judea and Samaria and the area of the Gaza Strip have been held by Israel since the Six Day War and until today in belligerent occupation.”

As such, the settlers have “no grounds for claiming today that they thought they were going to live within the boundaries of the State of Israel” when they took up residence in these areas, explained the two attorneys.

Two years earlier, then Attorney-General Elyakim Rubenstein reprimanded Sharon for referring to Yesha as being under occupation.

"These are territories that belonged to no recognized sovereign power before 1967, and therefore the correct way to describe the situation in the territories in legal terms is as ‘disputed territory,’ whose status is to be determined through agreements,” Rubenstein explained in May 2003.

Other experts have pointed out that even the term “disputed” is not entirely factual.

“According to international law, 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,” International Law Professor Talia Einhorn told Arutz 7 last August.

The mandate’s introduction clearly identifies it as being “based on the international recognition of the historic ties between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel.”

Einhorn noted, “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.'"

Even the 1947 UN Partition Resolution does not necessitate the creation of an Arab state west of the Jordan River, Einhorn explained, pointing out the often overlooked fact that the “resolution states specifically that it is merely a recommendation and nothing more.”

The Arab states’ rejection of the resolution voids the recommendation on any legal basis.

She further explained that UN resolutions 242 and 338, which make up the cornerstone of efforts to create a Palestinian Arab state, fall under Chapter VI of the world body’s charter, meaning they too are mere “recommendations.”

The last legally binding document to be adopted regarding the areas in question remains the 1920 San Remo resolution, which deeds full sovereignty to the Jewish people.

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