Historikern Moshe Dann skriver på Pajamas Media om de israeliska bosättningarnas legala status:
Bashing “the settlements” is commonly used to delegitimize Israel, negate the right of Jews to live in their homeland, and promote a second Arab Palestinian state. But are these charges valid? In order to answer this question one must refer to the law, the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV), specifically Article 49. […]
In 1971, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the official “guardians” of GC IV, arbitrarily declared that Israel’s presence in “occupied territories” violated GC IV and was therefore illegal.
Since the ICRC, a private Swiss organization, does not allow access to its protocols, there is no way of knowing who made these decisions and how they arrived at their conclusions, yet, they are widely accepted as law. […]Finally, since Israel did not “forcibly transfer” populations, prohibited in GC IV, condemning Israel lacked solid foundations. Therefore, in 2002, the Arab states at the Rome Statutes of the International Criminal Court added a new element to the law governing war crimes, making it a crime for an “occupying power” (i.e., Israel) to transfer its citizens into “occupied territory” not only forcibly, butindirectly as well — that is, by providing any assistance such as mortgages and infrastructure.
This Rome treaty provision was specifically designed to declare Jews who built homes over the Armistice Lines of 1949 and Israel guilty of war crimes. An extension of GC IV, it leads back to the ICRC. Without the ability to examine their archives, however, it’s a dead end. What is the ICRC hiding, and why?
Mycket intressant bakgrund. Och slutsatsen är träffande.
Whether Israeli settlements are “unacceptable” and “unhelpful” is debatable. ICRC and kangaroo court rulings against Israel, like those of the International Court of Justice, however, have no basis in proper judicial procedures. They serve only to demonize and delegitimize Israel, and abrogate the meaning of just law.