Secret memo shows Israel knew building settlements was illegal

The government of Israel were advised after the Six Day War that the building of settlements in the captured territories would be illegal. The advice was given by Theodor Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's legal adviser at the time and today one of the world's leading international jurists, and he has stated recently that he has never changed his opinion.

This is a serious blow to Israel's argument that the settlements do not violate international law, as it shows Israel - at the time - being warned that any settlements would be a violation of the Hague and Geneva conventions governing the conduct of occupying powers.

The legal opinion, a copy of which has been obtained by The Independent, was marked "Top Secret" and "Extremely Urgent" and reached the unequivocal conclusion, in the words of its author's summary, "that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

Judge Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia until 2005, said that, after 40 years of Jewish settlement growth in the West Bank - one of the main problems to be solved in any peace deal: "I believe that I would have given the same opinion today."

Despite the legal opinion, which was forwarded to Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister, but not made public at the time, the Labour cabinet progressively sanctioned settlements. This paved the way to growth which has resulted in at least 240,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank today.

Judge Meron, 76, is now an appeal judge at the Tribunal. Speaking about his 1967 opinion for the first time, he also tells tomorrow's Independent Magazine: "It's obvious to me that the fact that settlements were established and the pace of the establishment of the settlements made peacemaking much more difficult."

Blaming restrictions on Palestinian movement for the devastation of the Palestinian economy, the World Bank earlier this month acknowledged Israeli security concerns but added that many of the restrictions were aimed at "enhancing the free movement of settlers and the physical and economic expansion of the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population." The settlements and their "jurisdictions" effectively control about 40 per cent of the area of the West Bank.

The settlements, which George Bush recently referred to as "facts on the ground" - implying at the time that Israel could keep them - have always flown in the face of international law. Israel have tried many ways to get around this fact, including bizarrely claiming that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to this particular conflict, despite several rulings by the international community all insisting that Geneva does apply. This document now exposes the fact that Israel have known all along that Geneva applies and have sought to keep the advice they received secret.

The memorandum was written in September 1967 as the Eshkol government was already considering Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, seized from Syria during the Six Day War. It says that the international community had already rejected the "argument that the West Bank is not 'normal occupied territory'."

It pointed out that the British ambassador to the United Nations, Lord Caradon, had already asserted that Israel's position was that of an occupier. It added that a decree from the army command saying that military courts would "fulfil Geneva provisions" indicated that Israel thought so too.

Israel's argument surrounding the illegal settlements has always been a duplicitous one and it has now been revealed that she has always known that her argument was false.

Which means that Israel's actions have now been revealed as what many of us always suspected they were: land grabs. An attempt to take Palestinian land and to establish Eretz Israel despite the fact that their own legal advisor had told them that what they were proposing was completely illegal.

But they did it anyway...

Why has the international community allowed this? Why has the world sat around so impotently whilst Israel has engaged in such blatant illegality for the last forty years? We all know the answer. It is because one country wielded a veto every time the UN attempted to censure Israel for it's illegal actions.

And they wonder why they are hated? If most Americans knew the truth about what was being done in their name the world would be a very different place.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Israel, Palestine, illegal settlements, land grab, 1967 war, six day war