So it now seems the delusional imaginings of one Israeli civilian woman “caused” the Israelis’ entire, world-class armed forces to decide to close the Karni crossing for nearly all of the past six weeks.
At the time the crossing was first closed, Israeli spokespeople assured us that this was because they had evidence that Palestinians were digging dangerous tunnels somewhere close by. Today, HaAretz’s Amos Harel tells us that,
- A few weeks ago, the crossing was closed after a civilian employee thought she heard knocking underneath it, but searches uncovered no sign of a booby-trapped tunnel, and military professionals have since suggested that the government consider reopening the crossing.
The content of the Israeli reporting on this was such as to lead at least one good-faith observer– frequent JWN commenter Jonathan Edelstein– to conclude that, “The closing also occurred just after an explosion in a tunnel under the crossing.”
Explosion! How scary! (But just, in fact, non-existent.)
Karni is, as JWN readers probably know, the main crossing-point through which goods from outside, including vital foodstuffs and medical/health supplies, can enter the Gaza Strip and the only one through which the Strip’s exports (most of which are extremely perishable market-garden products bound for world markets) can be shipped… So those delusional imaginings of that one, quite possibly stressed-out Israeli woman were used as a pretext to impose the Israeli government’s regime of tight economic strangulation on all 1.4 million of Gaza’s people.
(I don’t necessarily blame her, either. The whole tenor of the propaganda from the Israeli authorities is designed to keep the fires of anti-Palestinian fear and hatred well stoked among the Israeli populace… particularly during an Israeli election season.)
I would love to know, though, at what point the Israeli military professionals reached the determination that the “knocking” allegedly heard by that woman was not in fact related to any activity (or “explosions”) in any non-existent Palestinian tunnel? It’s quite possible they reached that conclusion pretty fast– maybe, within hours… After all, tunnel-detection is something they have quite a lot of experience of doing, there in the Southern Command.
But regardless of how fast they discovered this, Karni remained closed… for weeks on end. At the insistence of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv it was re-opened briefly, Tuesday. But within 30 minutes Israeli authorities rammed it shut again.
And now, in the run-up to that great event in the march of global democracy, Israel’s March 28 general election, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is saying, according to Harel, that Karni should still be kept closed, “apparently partly out of fear of an election-eve attack.” It strikes me that he’s the one who really needs the smelling salts.
The content of the Israeli reporting on this was such as to lead at least one good-faith observer– frequent JWN commenter Jonathan Edelstein– to conclude that, “The closing also occurred just after an explosion in a tunnel under the crossing.”
There were a couple of closings, and I’m not sure I was talking about the same one as Amos Harel. The event precipitating the February 21 closing was reportedly characterized as an explosion by Palestinian sources (Yediot article here). The closing to which Harel refers may have been the one on March 9, for which the reasons were not initially specified.
Karni reopened for half an hour on Monday, several hours yesterday and was opened again for incoming traffic this morning. Also, traffic is now coming in from Egypt through Kerem Shalom.
And I’m not sure the fear of an election-eve attack should inspire “smelling salts,” given that such attacks have happened during past campaigns and a would-be suicide bomber was caught yesterday. I agree, though, that Israeli security decisions are often inspired more by fear than by rational risk assessment. That’s one more reason why Zahhar’s plan to realign the Gaza economy to Egypt is a good one.
And the fact that the woman may have heard something that turned out to be erroneous does not make her “delusional.”
Why are you so nasty and vicious, Helena?
Joshua needs to go back to second grade for English studies.
He equates Helena’s semantics “delusional imaginings” (quite ordinary) with a personal slander she did not say: “delusional person”.
Kindergarten mistake, Joshua, but in your case “in bad faith”. Like most of the wretched logic and twisted semantics of the pro-Cherokee final solution crowd.
What an irresponsible and presumtuous post. Here is the full text of the paragraph from which the single sentence was extracted:
Israel’s fear of reopening Karni stems from a double trauma last January – an attack at Karni that killed six civilians, and another at the Rafah crossing (which Israel had reopened despite warnings of planned attacks) that killed five soldiers. A few weeks ago, the crossing was closed after a civilian employee thought she heard knocking underneath it, but searches uncovered no sign of a booby-trapped tunnel, and military professionals have since suggested that the government consider reopening the crossing. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, however, refused – apparently partly out of fear of an election-eve attack.
Note that there have been two previous attacks and that one of these happened after a reopening despite warnings.
To portray this as “the delusional imaginings of one Israeli civilian woman” is simply crude.
Helena, don’t you think that there are people, actually there, on the ground, who know a bit more about the appropriate response to warnings from an employee (even if she is a woman and a civilian)?
Timothy, the imaginer of delusional imaginings [sic] is by definition ‘deluded.’ Redundancy aside, ‘delusional imaginings’ is insulting. Perhaps your native tongue is Cherokee?
As noted by others, someone who experiences “delusional imaginings” is “delusional.”
The “Palestinian Uber Alles” crowd strikes again.
Wow, I love all this “ad hominem” junk and it would be fun but…………. for the clear record that Dov Weisglass avowed that it was Israeli’s intent to “put the Palestinians on a diet”. Weisglass is doing it. He wasn’t kidding. The bread lines, the malnutrition in Gaza and the West Bank, are certainly not delusions, nor is Weisglass’ moral kinship with Andrew Jackson, who “genocided” the Cherokee by, in part, starvation.
Timothy,
Do you know who Dov Weissglass is and what official position he holds? If you did, you would understand that, despite what he may or may not say, he currently does not have much more authority to do anything than does Timothy L.
As I said before, you are a true credit to the fan club.
JES, give me a break.
This isn’t an issue about “job descriptions” and “task turf” somewhere in the fine print of Israel’s administrative regulations.
When Dov Weisglass speaks, it is important, it is revealing. He speaks as “Consigleri” for Israel’s leaders. Whose finger pulls the decisional trigger does not change Weisglass’ rank and capacity to speak for Israel. Just ask him.
Joshua sounds like a Zionist hack, lurking about the Blogosphere spreading propaganda.
Israel has abused our trust and support. I don’t want my money used to brutalize Palestinians.
Joshua sounds like a Zionist hack, lurking about the Blogosphere spreading propaganda.
‘observer’ sounds like he’s going through a tough time. Hatefulness is so sad and destructive. I hope you feel better soon, observer.
vadim wroth
“Hatefulness”
A new word to be added to the dictionary of words about any one saying things this group don’t like to hear…
I can only assume that Helena’s real concern is that the border is closed, not the reason for closing it.
With that in mind, let us assume, arguendo, that the Israelis are manufacturing a reason to close off Gaza. What of it?
Is Israel wrong to close the border to a place ruled by HAMAS? Must the Israel risk a single one of her citizens so that Palestinian Arabs can eat and exercise rights? In asking this, I am mindful of the HAMAS covenant which is, by any stretch of the imagination, a document of eliminationist, genocidal bigotry which calls for violent resistance but no peace and no recognition that there are legitimate rights due each side to the dispute.
Now, I understand that Palestinian Arabs have rights. But, again: I do not see that the Israelis owe it to Palestinian Arabs to risk losing any lives so that Palestinian Arabs can exercise such rights. On my view, Israelis also have rights. If the Palestinian Arabs expect to exercise rights -and they do have them -, they must be willing to acknowledge and allow Israelis the most basic of rights – life? HAMAS must, at a further minimum, see to it that Israelis do not have to die for such rights. But, in fact, we have HAMAS stating explicitly that peace is not desired but, instead, only armed resistance and liberation of a member of the UN – in violation of the UN Charter -.
Is Helena willing to recognize that the Palestinian side, by voting HAMAS into power, rejects any claim of legitimacy for Jews – or even Christians – other than, as HAMAS says, under the wings of Islam (i.e. as dhimmi)? If so, she should consider that reasonable people might prefer not to assist HAMAS’ project by bringing hardship to that project and its supporters. To me, that is a legitimate response to HAMAS by the Israelis.
Frankly, I do not see why the Israelis have any obligation to make armed resistance any easier, especially if – as will eventually occur – some Israelis will lose their lives. So, if there is even a possibility of a risk, that is more than enough, so far as I am concerned, to close the borders. Maybe a food shortage will bring Palestinian Arabs closer to their collective senses.
In short, it is certainly arguable that the Israelis, regardless of whether there is a known specific threat, are within their moral and, I think, legal rights to close borders as they see fit. So, I would tell HAMAS that if Palestinian Arabs want a connection with Israel, they must change their policy.
Neal: Whoever the Palestinians may have elected, a siege against a civilian population (particularly in response to what is at most low-intensity warfare) is a serious breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, specifically Article 23:
The article provides an exception under which a warring state can block humanitarian deliveries if they would provide a “definite military advantage” to the adversary. This, however, is defined as “substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy” or freeing up resources that would otherwise be used to produce such goods. When the enemy doesn’t have the capacity to produce enough essential foodstuffs or medicine for the population, then their delivery must be allowed.
In other words, even assuming that Israel is no longer an occupying power vis-a-vis Gaza (and there are arguments both ways), it has a legal obligation to allow humanitarian supplies to enter. Of course, it doesn’t have to allow such goods to enter via its own territory, but if it chooses to block such deliveries for security reasons, then it must allow them to enter via Egypt or by sea. To its credit, Israel accepted a negotiated compromise and is now allowing deliveries from Egypt as well as traffic through Karni, but it would not have been legally or morally entitled to block the deliveries indefinitely. Helena’s absolutely correct on this point.
Nevertheless, I have to take issue again with her dismissal of the risk of pre-election attacks. Within the past two hours, another suicide bomber was intercepted en route to Israel, making this the second attempted attack within 24 hours. Between this and similar attacks that have occurred during the run-up to previous elections, it certainly isn’t “smelling salts” fodder to regard the next six days as a high-risk period.
To the extent that Israel is blocking humanitarian aid and necessary goods, I agree with Jonathan.
To the extent they are cutting off regular trade, they are arguably permitted to do so, although I suspect I’m not alone in thinking that was a bad idea, given all the work both sides did to preserve the greenhouses.
I have read many of the posts on this blog and noticed a commonality among the Zionist-Israeli supporters. In order to accept their arguments, you must accept the following axioms.
1. Palestinians are the natural subjects of the Israelis.
2. America is the natural patron of Zionism.
Religious settlement, checkpoints and the oppression perpetrated by Israel in the occupied territories is INCONSISTENT with Israel’s security needs, and is CONSISTENT with an irrational, mission from god, to drive out the Arabs.
Gaza is a giant prison. If Israel is afraid to trade with Gaza, they should allow Gaza to trade with whom they please.
You can’t unjustly imprison and beat people, to later complain how they don’t appreciate the slop you feed them.
How can Israel continue with such irrational and foolish behavior, because they have a rich parent who bails them out. Us, the American tax payer is suckered into paying for Zionism. In return Israel maligns our reputation and gives Islamic Militants propaganda to recruit killer against us.
Israel must earn American support. Currently Israel harms us much more than they help us.
Neal writes: “So, if there is even a possibility of a risk, that is more than enough, so far as I am concerned, to close the borders.”
As is evident from the subsequent positing about the Geneva Convention, a risk of harm to an occupier (military or civilian) is not a basis for mass action against the helpless natives of the occupied land. There is always a risk of harm when one occupies by hostile militiary force. If Neal’s proposition is right, then the Turks were within their rights to act en masse against the Armenians as they did because of the risk of Armenian collaboratuion with Russia. Neal, do you justify the Armenian holocaust because it eliminated “any possible risk” of loss of Turkish life?
Ultimately this “even any possibility of a risk” jazz reflects the religious racism of the “hangnail” thesis of Jewish worth over the lives of non-Jews. Fortunately not all Jewish people subscribe to this view, but I can see there are some around who do.
Jonathan does well to point out that a seige against a civilian population is a serious breach of international law. However, Israel has been offering the Palestinians the use of Kerem Shalom for some time. As I understand from reporting here, the Palestinian side only agreed to use the alternative route of Kerem Shalom and Rafiah when Israel sent the trucks to the crossing with flour and dairy goods and essentially said: “Here are the goods. Accept them.” I think that the last two paragraphs are highly relvant (much more so than any half-baked assertions about “delusional imaginings”):
Throughout the crisis, Israeli officials have lambasted the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to alleviate Gaza’s suffering by allowing goods through Kerem Shalom instead. The PA has indeed prolonged the crisis for political reasons, ranging from reluctance to give in to an Israeli dictate, to the fact that Palestinian officials would not be able to charge the same inflated fees at Kerem Shalom as they do at Karni.
But Israel, alongside its genuine fear of terror attacks, is also guilty of playing politics at Gaza’s expense: It wants to fully disengage from Gaza, leaving the Strip’s only access to the outside world through Egypt. And Karni’s prolonged closure advances this goal.
Helena has taken a single sentence from an article by a journalist who is pretty well connected and has a reputation for being able to provide accurate analyses. Further, she has made a whole set of assumptions about this one sentence to draw an unfounded conclusion.
I would add here that, based on Helena’s earlier reporting of her interview with az-Zahhar, his and Israel’s goal are pretty much the same.
JES, re your “I would add here that, based on Helena’s earlier reporting of her interview with az-Zahhar, his and Israel’s goal are pretty much the same. …
I guess I’m not taking this as indicating that you, apparently an Israeli and a strong supporter of the mainstream Israeli worldview, are suddenly going to sign onto the Hamas Charter…. However, if you’re saying that there seems to be a marked, if only temporary convergence between the two unilateralisms espoused separately right now by the Israeli mainstream and by Hamas, then yes, that’s the conclusion I reached sometime ago and wrote about in this March 9 CSM column, where I termed it “parallel unilateralism”.
Actually, I’m writing quite a lot about that right now in the longer essay I’m writing.
I’m glad we finally agree on something. (Though I claim authorship of both the analysis and the term.)
Helena,
The person you should have talked to while here is Yitzhak ben-Aharon at kibbutz Givat Shmuel (ihud).
Ben-Aharon is over 100, and he was the head of the Histadrut labor federation in 1969. He warned then that Israel should not combine the economies; that it would be bad for them and it would be bad for us. Unfortunately, as with Moshe Sneh earlier, no one really listened.
Next time, JES, next time. There are actually a lot of Israelis I wanted to see this time but didn’t get the chance to because of time restrictions. Thanks for the hint, anyway.
(Actually, Efraim ben Moshe was one of them. All i managed was a hasty cellphone conversation with him.)
Helena,
Kember, Loney and Sooden are released.
Very happy for all you Christians and pacifists.
Let us hope they are well. Kember is 74!
To my critics Jonathan, et al,
Jonathan, you raise a good point about the Geneva Convention. I am not going to assert that you are incorrect – having not studied the case law on the topic -. I am going to note the following about which you are free to correct me:
The passage of the Geneva Convention you cite to states: “only for civilians of another High Contracting Party.” Is the PA a High Contracting Party? I again note that the rulers of the PA – now HAMAS – disclaim the Geneva Convention as a nullity as it is not consistent with Islamic rules of law. So, your argument appears to at least have some difficulties.
I suppose you would say that the territory is occupied. But, in fact, there are no Israeli troups in Gaza and the territory is not under Israeli authority. I note what the ICJ states: 8. The Court would observe that, under customary international law as reflected (see paragraph 89 below) in Article 42 of the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land annexed to the Fourth Hague Convention of 18 October 1907 (hereinafter “the Hague Regulations of 1907”), territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army, and the occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised. ICJ Opinion of 9 July 2004. Whatever relationship Israel has with Gaza, it is not under the authority of a hostile army or authority. It is under HAMAS.
As a governing body, I note that the ruling clique in the PA government holds the view that the Geneva Convention does not apply and that only Islamic rules of law apply. In fact, the view is that any law other than Islamic law is a nullity.
Islamic rules of law permit those living in enemy territory to be massacred, subject to protection of children, women, the feeble and clerics – so long as such people do not participate in any way in assisting resistance to Islamic military forces -. The PA ruling clique, in fact, takes the view that no Israelis are exempt from the rule permitting massacres.
On your theory, the Israelis have no right to take into consideration the stated position (and, in fact, the actual behavior) of the enemy. If that is the law, then it is an immoral and illegitimate law. I, frankly, do not believe that such is quite the case and that where one party does not agree to be part of the Convention or ignores the convention entirely, the other party has greater freedom to act.
I would agree that the Israelis should not allow civilians to starve to death. But, I would think that the Israeli are free to limit things other than that mere survival. Such, you will note, would tend to move the war toward conclusion, rather than fueling it.
Now, another of my critics asserts that the I am arguing the Turkish brief against the Armenians. In fact, I am not. The position of the Ottoman Turks was that the Armenians violated their pact of concession, known as a dhimma or zimma. The dhimma is a nationality pact of concession, meaning that it pertains to Armenians as a captured nation allowed to live in Ottoman Armenia, not in a separate land or a land technically under occupation.
So, the issue was not about a party under occupation at all but the treatment of a party subject to Turkish law directly, in this case as defined by the pact in question. Moreover, the Armenians were not a party making actual war against the Ottoman Turks. By contrast, the Palestinian Arabs have killed about 1,000 Israelis so the issues are rather different.
Now, I reiterate my view that the Israelis have no obligation to risk any of their people in order to help Palestinian Arabs.
High Contracting Party
The Geneva Conventions govern relations between signatories. Neither Hamas, the PLO, nor the PA are signatories. So the Geneva Conventions are moot.
The passage of the Geneva Convention you cite to states: “only for civilians of another High Contracting Party.”
This is true, but Article 23 also has to be interpreted in light of subsequent legal developments. At the time of the Geneva Convention, the rights provided by art. 23 applied only to conflicts of an international character between signatory states. Since then, however, other international legal instruments, including the Rome Statute, have extended the same rights to conflicts not of an international character. Therefore the PA’s non-signatory status might have mattered in 1949 but no longer does.
I should have mentioned this in the previous comment; I apologize for the incompleteness of my argument.
I suppose you would say that the territory is occupied
Actually, I don’t think Gaza is occupied territory. The recent ICJ decision in the DRC-Uganda litigation made clear that territory must be effectively controlled by foreign troops to be occupied, and that control of entry points isn’t enough. Gaza is no longer under the effective control of the IDF, so my opinion is that the ordinary law of war rather than the law of belligerent occupation applies.
That doesn’t matter for purposes of Article 23, though, because that article applies generally to armed conflict rather than only to occupied territory.
On your theory, the Israelis have no right to take into consideration the stated position (and, in fact, the actual behavior) of the enemy.
I think Israel does have authority to take these acts into consideration, to the extent permitted by the law of war. As you agree, that doesn’t include starving civilians to death.
Nice try, WarrenW, but no cigar. See Jonathan’s remarks just above. Also, bear in mind that Geneva IV is not about relations between “contracting parties”, but about the protection of the rights of civilians.
Regarding Warren W.’s declaration that the Geneva Conventions are moot (and all other similar nonsense): It never ceases to amaze me that some people will work so hard to justify denying basic human rights and protections to Palestinian (and Iraqi, and fill-in-the-blank) civilians. What an exercise in cold, inhuman heartlessness?
Shirin,
The issue raised is that Palestinians do not afford any legitimacy at all to Israel and Israelis. So, the natural question is why and to what extent Israelis should either respect or afford anything to Palestinians.
Before answering, I suggest you read the HAMAS covenant. It is, by any standards, an eliminationist Antisemitic document, includes a world wide Jewish conspiracy such that Jews have been behind all wars, disclaims any rights of any kind to Jews in Israel, disclaims making any settlement at all in favor, instead, of figting, says that conferences and peace talk is a waste of time and only extends right potentially at all – more like privileges – to non-Muslims under the, as it states, wings of Islam. That means, non-Muslims would become dhimmis. And that privilege is not extended to Jewish Israelis as they have, in essence, violated their dhimma (i.e. pact of concession). I suggest you read up a bit about the life of dhimmis. And I might add: read what those subjected to it thought. It is not a pretty picture whether or not it may have, when it existed, been somewhat, at times, nicer than how Jews were treated in European shtetles.
“my opinion is that the ordinary law of war rather than the law of belligerent occupation applies.”
Jonathan, are you claiming that Israel has declared war on the Gaza strip?
edq,
Not to speak for Jonathan, but I think he would say that Palestinian Arabs In Gaza have declared war on Israel.
I’m saying that there is a state of armed conflict to which the law of war applies. A declaration of war isn’t required for the law of war to apply, or else there would be precious few situations in which it could be invoked (especially given that it now applies to non-international conflicts).
Jonathan,
What does this “state of war” classification mean in terms of what is and is not permitted for Israel to do against the Palestinians? Is more or less permitted then under an occupation?
If an army invades a country and then withdraws its solders to the outskirts of a city would the city still be considered occupied?
Neal,
I can see we very different views on this subject. As far as I am concerned Israel is basically an apartheid state which invades its neighbors to colonize their land; that is the reason for the conflict.
What does this “state of war” classification mean in terms of what is and is not permitted for Israel to do against the Palestinians? Is more or less permitted then under an occupation?
The difference between an armed conflict and an occupation lies less in what Israel is permitted to do than in the amount of responsibility it holds (although there are some police powers given to occupiers by the Hague and Geneva Conventions to permit them to perform their duties). In either circumstance, a state is responsible for the acts of its military, and troops or commanders who violate the laws of war can be held liable for war crimes. If an occupation exists, however, the occupying power is also responsible for the general well-being of the occupied population and must take affirmative measures to ensure that well-being.
Boiled down to its essence, the end of the occupation in Gaza (assuming it has ended) means that Israel no longer has a duty to provide for the population but remains responsible for war crimes.
If an army invades a country and then withdraws its solders to the outskirts of a city would the city still be considered occupied?
According to the Congo judgment, and also to the recent arbitral decision between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the law of occupation applies to the territories actually controlled. It’s an open question, however, exactly how far a territory can be broken down for purposes of determining what is and is not occupied. The Congo judgment sheds some light on this (i.e., it’s possible to occupy a province without being considered an occupier of the whole country, and access control isn’t enough to create an occupation) but not a great deal.
If I had to give an opinion, I’d say that the determining factor is ability to exercise police power. If an army withdraws to the outskirts of a city but is in a position where it can easily exercise control, then the city is probably still occupied. If the army isn’t in a position to exercise police power (due, for instance, to the city being held by an armed resistance group), then the probably isn’t occupied. By this measure, the West Bank remains occupied territory while Gaza isn’t, but as I said above, there are arguments both ways.
edq,
Your contention that Israel is an apartheid state is based on substantial misunderstanding of the history, of the region and of the dispute. Israel is not a saint. But, frankly, it is when compared to what would be were it to give in to the Jihadists or, frankly, any European state that has ever faced a dispute over territory.
Jonathan
This is true, but Article 23 also has to be interpreted in light of subsequent legal developments. At the time of the Geneva Convention, the rights provided by art. 23 applied only to conflicts of an international character between signatory states. Since then, however, other international legal instruments, including the Rome Statute, have extended the same rights to conflicts not of an international character. Therefore the PA’s non-signatory status might have mattered in 1949 but no longer does.
If that’s so, that seems to me to be a major strike against the system of international law.
A treaty properly means what it says. There are usually mechanisms for modifying it if desired. However, in this case the GC wasn’t modified; instead you’re saying it can be modified by later, legally unrelated treaties (note that this is a modification, not an interpretation, since you’re taking a position the GC explicitly rules out), even as far as nonsignatories are concerned. The logical end rsult is that a minority of powerful or influential state would be able to modify international law as the political winds (or their own interests) blow, without the consent of the others, or even giving hem a voice (which is what passes for consent of the governed in intl law).
edq
As far as I am concerned Israel is basically an apartheid state which invades its neighbors to colonize their land; that is the reason for the conflict.
See you in Yamit.
By and large, the Palestinians aren’t following any rules of war, so I don’t expect that the Israelis will be adhering to rules either. You can observe the conflict and infer rules from behavior, but that’s not the same thing at all.
My guess is that having given up on the peace process, any future Israeli military actions against the Palestinians will be of shorter duration but possibly greater intensity. I would not be surprised to see Israel respond to rocket launchings by confiscating the launching territory.
For example, If the Palestinians use the land near the Ben Gurion airport to shoot down airliners, I would expect that territory to be invaded by the IDF and the population moved or moved out completely. Let us pray it doesn’t come to that. I actually don’t think it will come to that, if Hamas is in charge. But al-Queda might do something like that…
Shirin:
I am not trying to be cold-hearted nor am I pleased when Palestinian are hurt. I am trying to be accurate and realistic. My impression was that the Geneva Conventions basically have no force in the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis and I thought I would help out by providing that information.
As a practical matter neither Israelis nor Palestinians are recieving any protection from the international treaties governing the conduct of war. Perhaps more protection is being provided by the propaganda war in which each accuses the other of terrible things.
In any case, the Intifada is a small war, killing substantially fewer than a thousand people a year.
Many people are puzzled why such a small conflict gets so much international attention.
However, in this case the GC wasn’t modified; instead you’re saying it can be modified by later, legally unrelated treaties (note that this is a modification, not an interpretation, since you’re taking a position the GC explicitly rules out), even as far as nonsignatories are concerned.
I wouldn’t say that the subsequent treaties were “legally unrelated.” The Rome Statute, like the Geneva Conventions themselves, was an attempt to codify the humanitarian law of war. As such, it included both the Geneva Convention norms and the others that had achieved customary international law status during the subsequent half-century. These norms were weighed and approved by the drafters of the treaty, who certainly didn’t represent a “minority” of nations.
In any event, there are several schools of thought about the extent to which nations are bound by international norms. Under the contractual theory of international law, states have only those obligations they expressly assume. At the other end, there are those who believe that norms adopted by a sufficient number of states to represent a world consensus, or codified by an global institution, become universally binding. Of course, there are various intermediate positions as well as variations on each theme.
My personal opinion is that the universalists have the better of the argument when it comes to the humanitarian law of war. Wars are typically regional in effect, and allowing states to opt out of the law of war would inevitably affect the rights of neighboring populations. In addition, the Rome Statute, which is the most recent codification of the law of war, (1) applies to all armed conflicts without limitation, and (2) empowers the Security Council to refer war crimes cases to the ICC even where the offender comes from a non-signatory state. This seems to signal an intent to make the law of war universally binding, even upon the states that have not explicitly adopted it.
I realize that to a pure contractualist, what I said above would be the rankest sort of bullshit. But I’m not alone in believing that the IDF (like other armies) is obligated to observe the international humanitarian law of war. This is the position of, among others, the Israeli government and the Israeli courts (although, as in most common-law “dualist” countries, the domestic courts reserve the right to determine exactly what international humanitarian law is).
BTW, while I don’t intend to belabor the issue during a discussion of another topic, I’ve been on record many times as saying that the Israel-apartheid analogy is inaccurate and puerile.
WarrenW,
No, your twisted, self-serving interpretation that Palestinian civilians are not entitled to protection under Geneva IV is not helpful, it is nonsense intended to justify Israel’s terribl human rights record.
Shirin, while Warren’s interpretation may indeed be twisted, I doubt it is self-serving, and I doubt that he did the twisting; rather it is the product of ignorance and trusting the wrong people.
I’d like to remind Warren that most of the above discussion was over the point of what laws applied to Gaza. There is room for reasonable dispute now that Israel has withdrawn. However, before this, and still in the West Bank, the Golan and East Jerusalem, there is no room. It is perfectly clear that the Geneva Conventions apply to all parties, and all parties have agreed to respect them, including the PLO. There are unanimous decisions of the Security Council and the World Court on applicability.
As a practical matter neither Israelis nor Palestinians are recieving any protection from the international treaties governing the conduct of war.
The fact that these treaties are not respected as they should be, by anyone, does not mean they are not respected at all. For a very concrete example, many Israeli Supreme Court decisions, e.g. the wall decisions use such treaties to change government decisions. They have had a limited impact, but one quite real on the lives of the people directly affected.
Jonathan, just thought of this argument. If Gaza is still occupied, of course the whole of the GCs apply. If it is not, then the main objection, the possession of territory, to Palestine being considered a state, and thus the obstacle in considering its letter an instrument of accession is much weaker, so at least the laws of war apply, on any basis.
For a very concrete example, many Israeli Supreme Court decisions, e.g. the wall decisions use such treaties to change government decisions.
Which reminds me: I was meaning to take issue with your assertion (on another thread) that the ISC is “totally corrupt on this issue.” In fact, the ISC has applied the law of belligerent occupation in the OPT from the beginning, and has gone so far as to enjoin the IDF from pursuing certain battlefield tactics. The court does show a certain amount of deference to the executive in terms of security matters, but less than nearly any other national court I could name – try to imagine the United States Supreme Court prohibiting the use of certain military tactics in Iraq, and you’ll see what I mean.
Criticism of the ISC seems to have focused primarily on two areas: that it has never issued an explicit ruling against the settlements, and that its conclusion about the separation wall was different from the ICJ’s. I’d argue that the first of these is less a dodge than a pragmatic recognition of the limits of judicial authority: a court can’t practically resolve a generation-long conflict by fiat, and if it tried, it would lose much of the meliorative power it now has. With respect to the second, Israeli courts (like those of other dualist countries) reserve the right to construe treaties and principles of international law independently of supranational bodies, and given that the ISC was in possession of facts not presented to the ICJ, I’d say that its intepretations were at least plausible. And as you note, the ISC’s piecemeal separation wall jurisprudence has probably had much more practical effect than a sweeping ICJ-type ruling would have done.
Jonathan, just thought of this argument. If Gaza is still occupied, of course the whole of the GCs apply. If it is not, then the main objection, the possession of territory, to Palestine being considered a state, and thus the obstacle in considering its letter an instrument of accession is much weaker, so at least the laws of war apply, on any basis.
Interesting point. If you subscribe to the Montevideo theory of statehood (which I do), then Gaza and possibly the entire PNA is a state right now. On the other hand, an adherent of a recognition-based theory wouldn’t consider it a state. The PNA is in the same kind of legal limbo as Somaliland, Turkish Cyprus, South Ossetia and other unrecognized but functioning countries.
As above, I think the law of war applies to Israeli military operations in Gaza whether or not the PNA is a Geneva Convention signatory, but your proposition certainly adds something to the argument.
John R.,
You are right that it is not WarrenW who did the interpreting. He is merely parrotting verbatim the standard Zionist position contained in all the pamphlets and tracts. However, the position that Geneva IV does not apply is indeed self-serving because it is this denial of applicability that they use to legitimize Israel’s colonization of the Palestinian territories as well as most of its other human rights violations, including house demolitions, expulstions, land confiscations, that horrible structure WarrenW has ironically dubbed the “peace wall” (it has nothing whatsoever to do with peace, of course), and so on and on and on.
Jonathan: Well, I probably got too hot under the collar then, been meaning to and hereby do apologize to JES also. I think that if the court had gotten more involved in the early days, it might have been able to halt or strangle the enterprise from the beginning, or when, say Carter was president – it could have given him crucial cover to really pressure Israel.
By the way, there’s an interesting, somewhat similar point made in the discussion here: http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/28214 or in Ha’aretz “the Lobby even denies Israel a luxury that so many other countries benefit from: of having the excuse of external encouragement to do things that are domestically tricky but nationally necessary.”
In any case, the court could have stood up as Marshall did to Jackson. That had no effect, but the world is different now, and I think that the longterm moral authority would be more effective than short term amelioration.
I think if one puts enough arguments together, the position of someone who denies the laws of war apply would be weird, if not impossible. Already it would have to be a “statehood is recognition-based” contractualist, which is kind of odd to my understanding.
Shirin, what I meant is that I don’t think Warren is a settler!
John R.,
Ah – ok. Well, I do not think he is either. However, denial of the applicability of Geneva IV is self-serving for more than just the settlers. It serves the agenda of anyone who wants to justify Israel’s territorial greed in the Palestinians territories or any of its other violations of human rights.
Of course, they cannot use the same rationalizations to justify their clear violations of Geneva IV in the (apparently forgotten) occupation, ethnic cleansing, and colonization of the Golan Heights. Whenever I ask about that, there is always a quick exit from the discussion of the Israel First crowd, or an abrupt change of subject.
I think that if the court had gotten more involved in the early days, it might have been able to halt or strangle the enterprise from the beginning
Hmmm, I wonder if there was a case in which it could have done so. The civilian settlements in the early days were built on unowned land, so the issue wouldn’t have come up in a land confiscation petition, and the Palestinians didn’t yet have an organized legal defense network that knew how to use the Israeli courts. I’ll have to make inquiries and see if there were any 1970s-era cases in which the issue was or could have been raised.
This is from (sleepy) memory, I probably am collapsing a few related decisions in my mind: The Elon Moreh decision was around 1978 IIRC, and was pretty much the fundamental one in terms of law; it restricted settlements to ones supposedly there for security reasons. It deemed Hague customary law, and thus municipal law (and for Israel was the (natural) precedent that customary law is self-executing, municipal law.) If it had done the same for Geneva, and given people rights to sue under it, or if it just said it applied de jure, things would have been a lot better and the enterprise might have been eliminated before it got really pernicious. There’s good stuff on it on the web, an excellent paper that is or was at B’tselem; they reorganized the site since I downloaded it last, so lackadaisical searching didn’t turn it up a few months ago; they and I too probably have it somewhere.
I think that Palestine is in a better position than the other legal limbo places you mention. There are many, many more states that recognize it as a state.