Illegal occupation: Since the establishment of the United Nations at the close of World War II, international law has officially recognized the unacceptability of the acquisition of territory by war. In 1947, the U.N. passed a resolution – 181 – providing for a partition of historic Palestine to create a Jewish state and an “Arab state.” The Palestinian people quite rightly saw this as unjust-their British colonizers, not them, were consulted in the creation of the state of Israel. In 1947, the Jewish population of Palestine-including Palestinian Jews who had no part in the Zionist movement seeking to re-colonize historic Palestine-owned 3% of Palestinian land; the Palestinian population objected to a plan that effectively deprived them of half of the land that had always belonged to them, without their consent. In fact, the armistice lines at the end of the 1948 war were drawn giving greater boundaries to the state of Israel than those in the original partition plan. The war of 1948 is also known as al-Nakba: the catastrophe – the ethnic cleansing, through massacres, terror, and forcing people to flee, of approximately one million Palestinians, who became refugees. Today, there are eight million Palestinians in the world; half are refugees. Nevertheless, the Palestine Liberation Organization, recognized as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, has recognized not only the partition borders in Resolution 181, but also recognized the armistice borders established at the end of the war-despite the fact that it leaves the Palestinian population of historic Palestine with only 22% of what was their land. Israel, on the other hand, has not withdrawn nor offered to withdraw to the borders prescribed in Resolution 188, nor has it agreed to recognize a Palestinian state in the remainder of historic Palestine. In the 1967 war, Israel conquered the Gaza Strip (under Egyptian control), the Sinai (Egyptian land) the West Bank of the Jordan River (under Jordanian control) and the Golan Heights (Syrian land). Despite common allegations to the contrary, the 1967 war was not a defensive war for Israel-Israel launched strikes against Jordan and Egypt to begin the war. At the time, it immediately annexed East Jerusalem and illegally expanded the borders of Israeli-held Jerusalem, and took control of the entirety of these occupied territories. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, citing “the inadmissibility of territory acquired by war,” immediately called upon Israel to vacate the territories it occupied in 1967. This was followed by Security Council Resolution 338 in 1973, reiterating these points. Indeed, it has become nearly a ritual for the United Nations to declare Israel’s occupation illegal and call for its end. Nevertheless, Israel has continued its occupation. Indeed, it has even constructed numerous “settlements,” Jewish-only constructions on occupied Palestinian territory, created by seizing Palestinian land and water and building huge structures with massive military presences surrounding them all around Palestinian cities. The construction of the settlements has encircled Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a huge ring of seized territory. One-third of the Gaza Strip-already the site of the highest population density in the world-and nearly one-half of the West Bank-have been officially seized for settlement construction and “security zones.” Once again, the United Nations has repeatedly declared these settlements illegal and a violation of international law; nonetheless, the Israeli government continues to provide significant economic advantages for those willing to live in a settlement. Contrary to popular belief, these settlements more than doubled in number during the period of the Oslo “peace process”, a process that, contrary to Israeli assertions, never recognized the validity of either United Nations resolution 188 or 242. Israel insisted upon a Palestinian “state” broken up repeatedly by Israeli-military-controlled zones, without water rights, or border rights, and encompassing the settlers, their “security zones,” and their military guards. The proposal was far more akin to one of the “Bantustans”-pseudo-independent African states surrounded on all sides by South Africa and recognized only by South Africa as legal fictions of apartheid-than any meaningful version of independence, statehood, or the end of the occupation.
Collective punishment: Contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits collective punishment from being used against a population in supposed retribution for the acts of a few, Israel has continually applied brutal collective punishment to the Palestinian people. Palestinian land has been subject to “closure” since 1993; Palestinians, who had once served as a labor army in Israel, now face a rate of 47% unemployment. The entire Gaza Strip has become, in effect, the world’s largest prison, enclosed by a fence with its citizens largely prohibited from entering either along 1948 borders or, now, into Egypt. Military checkpoints divide Palestinian territory further; passage from city to city or place to place that once took minutes now takes hours; voyages that once took hours now take days. The Palestinian agricultural trade has languished, with produce and crops rotting at military checkpoints; people are denied medical care while waiting at checkpoints; the entire population goes through this humiliating ritual merely to pass from place to place within their own land. Civilian cities, refugee camps and villages are bombed and subject to military attack; crowded apartment buildings are bombed; civilian homes are demolished; the institutions of civil society have had their records, equipment and material systematically destroyed. Palestinian cities live under curfew-often a twenty-four hour, shoot-to-kill curfew, in which any Palestinian on the street may be killed by omnipresent Israeli soldiers. Palestinian education has been attacked, first by curfew preventing students from ever reaching school, and specifically through the repeated closure of Palestinian universities. These measures are the face of collective punishment in Palestine; every Palestinian is subject to indignity, imprisonment, torture and death. Rather than “dissuading terrorism,” such tactics serve only to perpetrate a war against millions of Palestinian civilians
War crimes: Most recently, Israel denied a United Nations investigatory team access to the Jenin refugee camp, the site of horrific destruction in the battles of the Israeli reoccupation of April 2002. Despite Israeli assurances that the army did nothing wrong in Jenin, the utter demolition of a huge area of a highly populated refugee camp indicates in itself a severe lack of recognition of Palestinian human rights, and Israel has repeatedly denied independent investigators access to the site. In November 2002, the human rights group Amnesty International issued a report on Israeli actions in Jenin and Nablus charging “clear evidence” of Israeli war crimes, including the targeting of civilians, political assassinations, the use of human shields, and the demolition of homes. However, Israeli war crimes did not begin with Jenin and Nablus. Most infamously, in Lebanon in 1982, now-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led Israeli troops in Lebanon who stood aside to allow Phalangist Lebanese armies access to the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. Thousands were brutally murdered at Sabra and Chatila; Israel’s own investigatory commission, the Kahane commission, found Ariel Sharon personally responsible for the staggering war crimes in Lebanon. Nonetheless, Sharon sits today as Prime Minister of the state of Israel, honored rather than prosecuted for his war crimes. Israeli war crimes in Lebanon continued throughout its invasion; in 1996, Israel blocked an investigatory panel similar to that planned for Jenin after its bombing at Qana that killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians. Israel has repeatedly sought to evade prosecution or investigation for these crimes; in August 2002 it made a bilateral agreement with the United States that both countries would protect the other from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
Denial of refugee rights: All refugees-people forced from their homes during time of war, or caused to flee from their homes by conflict and war-are guaranteed by law their right to return to their homes and homeland. Nevertheless, the millions of refugees created by the wars of 1948 and 1967 are denied their rights to return to their homeland. In United Nations Resolution 194-upon which Israel’s admission to the United Nations was predicated-the United Nations declared that the Palestinian refugees must be granted their right to return home, or given the option to be compensated for their loss. Refugees have received no return, no choice, and even no compensation. Instead, the human rights of millions of Palestinians are denied on the basis that their ethnicity and religion pose an existential threat to the Israeli state. Palestinians are cited as a “demographic concern,” their human rights denied because of clear racial, ethnic and religious oppression. Refugees do not gain their rights on the basis of ethnicity; rather, they are integral human rights that cannot be denied. Israel has openly defied the terms of its own admission to the United Nations for decades, as it scorns the refugees’ right of return. Instead, it has implemented as “Basic Law” a “Law of Return” for any Jewish person in the world wishing to settle in Israel. While people from around the world are granted citizenship, government support, and recognition, Palestinians whose land was stolen in 1948 are recognized not at all. After the war of 1948, refugees’ property was officially expropriated under the Absentee Property Law, which declared anyone not present on their land at the close of the war an “absentee landholder” and granted their property to the state. Over 92% of Israel today consists of such land officially stolen, while refugees continue to live in camps, relying on support from the United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNRWA). Refugee repatriation has taken place around the world; most recently in Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo. Palestinian refugees no longer may be denied their rights solely for being Palestinian. Any vision of justice in the Middle East must include justice for the refugees-created by Israel, their land stolen by Israel.
Defiance of United Nations Resolutions: Israel is currently in violation of more United Nations resolutions than any other country in the world. From resolutions demanding that the annexation of East Jerusalem be reversed, to those demanding the end of settlement construction, to those demanding withdrawal to 1967 borders, to those demanding an end to political assassinations, to those requiring compensation to the victims of its military assaults, including Lebanon and Tunisia, over 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions passed between 1968 and 2002 have gone ignored by Israel. At a time in which violations of such resolutions are used as a pretext for war on Iraq, it is strikingly relevant that the State of Israel has faced no consequences for its continual denial of UN resolutions and rights guaranteed in international human rights law. A few basic UN resolutions, 181, 194, 242, and 338, are among the most well-known dealing with the conflict. While various Israeli politicians have claimed to support various of these resolutions, and have even developed their own interpretation of 242 that enables the 1979 peace treaty with Israel to supersede the rights of Palestinians, none of these resolutions have, in reality, been enforced. While the initial partition resolution-181-was a product of colonial attitudes that was deeply unfair to the Palestinian owners and inhabitants of the land, the Palestinian people through the PLO have officially recognized the partition plan, while Israel has never acted to create borders as those shown in the original partition plan, nor has it ever sought to support an “Arab state” as supported by Resolution 181. Although 194 is a General Assembly resolution, Israel’s entrance to the United Nations was contingent upon its adoption. This resolution restates the general rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands; Israel has instead denied millions of people their right to return home on the grounds that the “Jewish character of the state” would be threatened by a population not of their preferred ethnic or religious heritage-regardless of human rights. Resolution 242, passed in 1967, recognizes the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for the “withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories of recent conflict.” Even through the Oslo period (1993-2000), Israel has never withdrawn its army from the occupied territories. Resolution 338 reiterated the premises of 242, and was passed in 1973. Rather than support these resolutions as a guide of the international community, however, Israel has repeatedly rejected them. Indeed, during the “peace process” negotiations at Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak conditioned any settlement on the willingness of the Palestinian delegation to sign an “end of conflict statement” negating the effect of all of these-and other-United Nations resolutions. The Palestinians’ unwillingness to sign this document was later portrayed as a part of their rejection of a “generous offer”-one that provided not only mere fragments of a state, but was based on the nullification of international law.
Other resolutions currently violated by Israel include:
Resolution 252 (1968) Israel
Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures that change the legal status of Jerusalem, including the expropriation of land and properties thereon.
262 (1968) Israel
Calls upon Israel to pay compensation to Lebanon for destruction of airliners at Beirut International Airport.
267 (1969) Israel
Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.
271 (1969) Israel
Reiterates calls to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem and calls on Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers.
298 (1971) Israel
Reiterates demand that Israel rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.
446 (1979) Israel
Calls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers, to rescind previous measures that violate these relevant provisions, and “in particular, not to transport parts of its civilian population into the occupied Arab territories.”
452 (1979) Israel
Calls on the government of Israel to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction, and planning of settlements in the Arab territories, occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.
465 (1980) Israel
Reiterates previous resolutions on Israel’s settlements policy.
471 (1980) Israel
Demands prosecution of those involved in assassination attempts of West Bank leaders and compensation for damages; reiterates demands to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention.
484 (1980) Israel
Reiterates request that Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
487 (1981) Israel
Calls upon Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
497 (1981) Israel
Demands that Israel rescind its decision to impose its domestic laws in the occupied Syrian Golan region.
592 (1986) Israel
Insists Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Conventions in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories.
605 (1987) Israel
“Calls once more upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide immediately and scrupulously by the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, and to desist forthwith from its policies and practices that are in violations of the provisions of the Convention.”
607 (1986) Israel
Reiterates calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and to cease its practice of deportations from occupied Arab territories.
608 (1988) Israel
Reiterates call for Israel to cease its deportations.
636 (1989) Israel
Reiterates call for Israel to cease its deportations.
641 (1989) Israel
Reiterates previous resolutions calling on Israel to desist in its deportations.
672 (1990) Israel
Reiterates calls for Israel to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.
673 (1990) Israel
Insists that Israel come into compliance with resolution 672.
681 (1990) Israel
Reiterates call on Israel to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.
726 (1992) Israel
Reiterates calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and to cease its practice of deportations from occupied Arab territories.
799 (1992) Israel
“Reaffirms applicability of Fourth Geneva Convention…to all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and affirms that deportation of civilians constitutes a contravention of its obligations under the Convention.”
904 (1994) Israel
Calls upon Israel, as the occupying power, “to take and implement measures, inter alia, confiscation of arms, with the aim of preventing illegal acts of violence by settlers.”
1073 (1996) Israel
“Calls on the safety and security of Palestinian civilians to be ensured.”
1322 (2000) Israel
Calls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying power.
1402 (2002) Israel
Calls for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian cities.
1403 (2002) Israel
Demands that Israel go through with “the implementation of its resolution 1402, without delay.”
1405 (2002) Israel
Calls for UN inspectors to investigate civilian deaths during an Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp.
1435 (2002) Israel
Calls on Israel to withdraw to positions of September 2000 and end its military activities in and around Ramallah, including the destruction of security and civilian infrastructure.
Unequal justice: Within 1948 borders, some Palestinians-especially those in largely Arab areas near the Galilee, within some cities in central Israel, or in the Negev desert in the south-escaped the attempt to remove all Palestinians from the land that became the state of Israel. At the close of the war, while nearly a million Palestinians were made refugees, 150,000 remained. These Palestinians were made citizens of the new state, but lived under military rule-of the type we see today in the West Bank and Gaza Strip-until 1966. They constitute a national, ethnic, linguistic and religious minority as recognized as requiring minority rights under international law; Israel has refused to recognize them as such, however. Many Palestinians within Israeli borders became internal refugees; driven from their own land to areas elsewhere within the Green Line, their property was subject to confiscation under the Absentee Property Law. Many families were parted by the close of the war-only those specific individuals who were within the 1948 borders were allowed Israeli citizenship, however. The state racism that is visible in both Israel’s continuing practice of defining itself as a “state of the Jewish people” and refusing to include its Palestinian citizens, and in popular references to the Palestinian citizen population as a “demographic concern” due to population increase, is also visible in state-funded services from water and sewer, to education, to street maintenance. Many Palestinian villages remain officially “unrecognized”; never recognized in 1948, their centuries-old existence is deemed illegal, and residents receive no government services. Even in largely Palestinian communities that are officially recognized, the facilities accorded these communities are sharply and visibly inferior to those in majority-Jewish communities. Many Palestinian citizens of Israel are unemployed. The 92% of Israel’s land owned by the Jewish National Fund is entirely unavailable to Palestinian citizens of Israel for purchase or rent. While the Israeli government claims that the severe and visible discrimination occurs only because Palestinian citizens of Israel-unlike Jewish citizens-are not conscripted into the army, the same discrimination is evident against Druze and Bedouins, who are conscripted into the Israeli army. In addition, Jewish yeshiva students, who do not serve in the army, are also granted all benefits contingent upon military service, while Palestinians are denied them. Palestinian political protest has been sharply repressed; in October 2000, the army fired upon peaceful street demonstrations of Palestinian citizens of Israel and killed 13. Indeed, in Israel’s Basic Laws-a set of laws that substitute for a constitution in Israel-parties are prohibited from running for office should they deny Israel’s status as a “state of the Jewish people.” Proposals that this should read “and its Arab citizens” were denied; thus, arguing for equality is officially illegal in the Israeli political system. Instead, calls for “transfer” have become ever more prominent from the right-wing parties; from the early days of the Zionist movement, some have called for all Palestinians to be “transferred” from historic Palestine to a surrounding Arab nation, such as Jordan. Right-wing parties today call for such transfer-ethnic cleansing-not only of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but within 1948 borders itself.
Human rights violations: Israel has engaged in numerous human rights violations not described in detail above. In addition to its collective punishment of the Palestinian people, the Israeli government has engaged in numerous specific violations of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Israel has never recognized equal dignity and rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian civilians have no right to life, liberty, or security under Israeli occupation. In the West Bank, Palestinian cities are put under twenty-four-hour, shoot to kill curfews, in which the Israeli army may shoot any Palestinian who so much as appears on his front step. Palestinian society, business and education has been devastated by these curfews. Palestinians must pass from place to place through a series of checkpoints, a humiliating and dangerous ritual that has led to the denial of medical care and even death. Palestinians are deprived of the most basic of liberties. Palestinians are regularly subjected to torture. Torture has long been a practice of the Israeli army, the Shin Bet (internal security/intelligence agency) and the border patrols. In 1997, the Supreme Court officially banned torture; however, it allowed the use of “moderate physical pressure.” These “moderate physical” methods, including tying Palestinians to small chairs, sleep deprivation, hooding, and violent shaking, continue to be used routinely against thousands of Palestinian detainees.Palestinians in the occupied territories are not provided the right of equal recognition under the law. Violent acts by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, including looting, assault, and murder, are rarely prosecuted; if they are prosecuted, it is not vigorously. While Palestinians in the occupied territories live under military rule, their exports are monitored by Israel, their water rights are denied, and while Israelis speed through the occupied territories on special roads built just for them-bypass roads-Palestinians are caught at checkpoints for hours. Palestinian water in the West Bank is regularly confiscated for Israeli use; even within the West Bank, 70 percent of scarce water resources go to serve small settlements, while the remaining 30 percent is apportioned among millions of Palestinians. Palestinian water tanks are often targeted for shooting by soldiers in towns; a clear assault on civilians. While Palestinian citizens of Israel have access to the regular Israeli court system, Palestinians in the occupied territories must rely on a military justice system. Unless their cause is petitioned for by Israelis, they have no chance of access to the broader court system. Crimes committed by settlers within the occupied territories, however, are directed to the regular/civilian Israeli courts; they are given recourse to all the freedoms thus accorded, unlike Palestinians.
Palestinians are often arrested en masse and detained. “Administrative detention” allows Israel to hold Palestinians without charges for over six months; this sort of imprisonment has become a standard experience among young Palestinian men. During the spring 2002 assault on Palestinian cities, thousands of young men-often every man in the city that could be found-were subject to mass detention and imprisonment. Family members of Palestinian militants are also punished by exile to the Gaza Strip, which has become an internal prison, despite their own innocence and prohibitions on exile and deportation. Israel often engages in “extrajudicial executions”-assassinating Palestinian political leaders without a trial. These extrajudicial executions have been condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations; nonetheless, Israel continues them, referring to the practice as “targeted killing.” In addition, Palestinians in the occupied territories are often used as human shields by Israeli soldiers; deemed the “neighbor practice,” Palestinians are taken by Israeli soldiers to stand in front of the soldiers and be placed at windows. This use of human shields, an illegal attack on civilians, is standard practice for the Israeli army. Palestinian homes are often invaded and used as bases for Israeli soldiers; the family dwelling therein is often sent to a small room or an upstairs floor, while soldiers have the run of the house. Palestinian walls are shot out, kicked through, and destroyed, in order to create “safe passage” for soldiers. In non-combatant territories, Palestinian homes are demolished with Caterpillar bulldozers, charged with being “illegally built” within Palestinian territory. Home demolition has also become a tactic used against family members of Palestinian militants. The Israeli army has used house demolition as a standard practice against Palestinian civilians. Palestinian land is also arbitrarily confiscated, for settlement construction, and, now, the erection of the “apartheid wall” surrounding the West Bank. Palestinian villages are separated by the wall; fertile Palestinian agricultural land is being destroyed in order to build this wall on occupied territory, in peaceful, civilian villages. Indeed, the wall is not built along the Green Line-the 1948 borders of Israel-but on paths cutting through the West Bank, severing Palestinian communities from one another and often running through and directly destroying some of Palestine’s most fertile agricultural land. Palestinian elementary and high schools are often forced closed by curfew; Palestinian universities are also under military closure. Universities such as Bir Zeit and Bethlehem have come under direct military attack; they have also been prevented from holding classes. In effect, a generation of Palestinians is being deprived systematically of education at all levels. In addition, Israel has many weapons of mass destruction, including around 200 nuclear weapons-despite having agreed to non-proliferation.
The world, and specifically the United States, can no longer be silent about the criminal Israeli regime. Conceived by colonial powers without the consent of the indigenous Palestinian people, the State of Israel has continued to pursue its institutionalized policies of racism, discrimination and oppression. Indeed, emboldened by the seemingly impenetrable safety net of United States aid, discussion of ethnic cleansing (“transfer”) of all Palestinians to Jordan or other Arab states has become only more popular in Israel in recent years. Unlike other countries receiving foreign aid, Israel’s aid is unencumbered with restrictions-thus, it may be used directly to promote settlements, engage in military incursions inside the occupied territories, and other acts in violation of international law. For too long, the world has stood silent. It is our monies that allow the Israeli government free rein in its assault on the Palestinian people. No longer should they be used in this manner; no longer should the investments of workers, the grants of alumni and the tuition of students be used to prop up a brutal military occupation.
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