Israelis Were Warned on Illegality of Settlements in 1967 Memo

The problem is that we don't have a time machine like Doctor Who. We can't go back in time and fix past mistakes, we can only deal with the reality as it is today.

Published on Saturday, March 11, 2006 by the lndependent/UK

Israelis Were Warned on Illegality of Settlements in 1967 Memo

by Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Israeli ministers were secretly warned just after the Six-Day War in 1967 that any policy of building settlements across occupied Palestinian territories violated international law.

A "top secret" memo by the Foreign Ministry's then legal counsel said that would "contravene the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention". Growth of Jewish settlements over the next three decades followed.

The official advice that a policy which is now a major obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had no basis in international law has been highlighted by the Israeli historian, Gershom Gorenberg. His new book, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements will generate fresh debate on the legality of the West Bank settlements in the wake of Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw 8,500 settlers from Gaza last August.

Most of the international community has held that Jewish settlement in the territories seized in the 1967 war contravened international law, and the Geneva Conventions in particular, but this has long been publicly contested by Israel.

The highly classified internal advice was given by Theodor Meron, who left Israel a decade later and became a leading international jurist who until the end of last year was president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0311-06.htm

The Accidental Empire : Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 by Gershom Gorenberg.

KVELL - My aunt called me -- flip to pages 223-225 - my Mapam Mishbocah were against the settlements -- END KVELL

The settlements were not universally backed - read Gorenberg's book. The working stiff lefties were very much against the settlements. Read Gorenberg's book - not the excerpts, blogs, opinions, DU posts, criticisms. But the book itself. (I am not shrieking at you - I know that you do your homework - just some others).

So much suffering based on a crime. What must be done is that this crime must be ended with all deliberate speed. Dismantle the settlements, give compensation to Palestinians, get the troops and the settlers out of illegally occupied land. Tear down the wall.

there is really nothing not that much to negotiate. It is not that difficult.

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See append 1, and read The Accidental Empire : Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 by Gershom Gorenberg.

It wouldn't be that difficult either, if there had been some earlier precedent for drawing the line on illegal expansion.

Reasonable compensation for displaced Palestinians - somewhere along the line - could have averted much conflict.

It could still make a huge difference. The law should apply to Israel - why doesn't it?