Verity Courier
Palestine Again
By Ron Estes
22 June 2023
Violence once again stirs international headlines in the Israeli occupied Palestinian West Bank territory. On Sunday, 19 June, Israeli soldiers entered the Palestinian town of Jenin to arrest two Palestinians. They met armed resistance that wounded eight Israeli soldiers. The Israeli response killed five Palestinians and wounded more than 90.
Determined to resist the Israeli incursion, two days later, four Israeli settlers were shot and killed near an Israeli settlement. That shooting spurred 400 Israeli settlers to enter a nearby Palestinian village firing weapons, burning homes and cars, and wounding four Palestinians. Reports of the number of Palestinians killed in the attack have not become public.
In the midst of the violent turmoil, four Israeli civilians were wounded at the Eli Israeli settlement as Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu announced that 1,000 new Israeli housing units would be built in the Israeli Eli settlement.
Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal They violate Article 49, paragraph six of the Fourth Geneva Convention which explicitly stipulates that “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Violations of the Geneva Convention are prosecutable as war crimes before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The UN International Court of Justice ruled that Israeli provision of infrastructure, land, funding, schools, synagogues, water, electricity, roads, etc., constitutes transfer of civilian population to occupied territory, and thus the settlements violate international law and are illegal, as did: Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch, and the European Union. The Conference of the Convention of the High Contracting Parties of the Geneva Convention declared in 2001 the Israeli settlements on the West Bank are illegal.
Benjamin Netanyahu, elected for the 6th time as Prime Minister of Israel, has formed a coalition to govern which Israeli media has classified as the most right-wing in the history of Israel. And already the new government has precipitated a crisis for the Biden administration in the UN Security Council.
The Netanyahu Government has avowed to strengthen and increase the size of Israeli settlements built on Israeli occupied Palestinian territory. Challenging that intention is a draft resolution introduced to the Security Council by the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the Security Council, which demands an immediate halt to Israeli settlement activity. That resolution is being actively supported by the Palestinian leadership.
For domestic political reasons, in the face of the upcoming 2024 election, the U.S. is opposed to the UAE, Palestinian supported resolution, and will most certainly veto it, despite the fact that the resolution will be strongly endorsed by the Security Council as a necessary requirement to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli, Palestinian crisis. Since first assuming the premiership of Israel, Netanyahu has insisted to the international community that his government struggles against Palestinian terrorism in the Palestinian Territories. In reality, international law does not brand Palestinian violence against the Israeli occupation to be terrorism.
On 29 November 2012, Voting 138 to 9 against, with 41 abstentions, the UN General Assembly accorded Palestine non-Member Observer State status in the United Nations.
The legal right of the State of Palestine to resist its occupation by Israel—to fight for the ability to promote, sustain, and nurture human life, to fight for their right to grow, to flourish—comes from two documents: the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples and the Fourth Geneva Convention and its subsequent protocols.
Taken together, people have the right to “fight against colonial domination and alien occupation in the exercise of their right to self-determination. ”
“Though the Israeli government and the US media persist in describing the second Palestinian intifada as a security crisis or a disruption to the ‘peace process,’ in international law, Palestinian resistance to its occupation by Israel is a legally protected right…Israel’s failures to abide by international law, as a belligerent occupant, amounts to a fundamental denial of the right of self-determination, and more generally of respect for the framework of belligerent occupation — giving rise to a Palestinian right of resistance.” Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, a professor of international law at Princeton University.
The Biden Administration faces unprecedented opportunities to take historical strides toward peace in this troubled region. Let’s hope it will receive the necessary support to succeed.
Mr. Estes served 25 years as an Operations Officer in the CIA Clandestine Service.
