Just what are the "Occupied territories"?

Factual Questions
1

In the whole Israel /Palestinian conflict, I hear the term Occupied territories over and over again, but I only have a vague idea about them. Please help me by answering the following factual questions.

  1. Where are they? In the Gaza Strip? The West Bank? Where?
  2. This might be tricky. Since I’m posting this here, and not in GD, I’m hopping that we’ll all mostly stick to facts, and not get into arguing opinions or ideology.
    Is the term “Occupied territories” correct in the since that the land really belongs to the Palestinians and the Israelis are occupying it? Or, is it Israelie owned lands and the term is kind of misleading?
    Now, I’m hoping the answer will be from a legal stand point. But this is probably tricky and debatable too (maybe not, but I have a feeling it is).
    And to try to avoid people playing semantics games, yes I know that Israel feels that they have the right to be there and the Palestinians don’t, but putting aside opinions and ideology and so forth, is there any clear legal ownership either by the Palestinians
    or Israelis? Of course, again, the answer may be highly debateable or unclear. Oh well, anyway, thanks in advance for your answers.
2

(1) The occupied lands is generally considered to be the Gaza strip and the West Bank which Israel occupied after winning the 1967 War. However, many Palestinians consider all of Israel occupied land.

(2) This was answered by (1) above.

I won’t get into Israel proper as being “occupied land,” which, clearly, it is not, as the Jews bought much of this land, most of the purchases being before 1900. It was then mostly uninhabited, but the Jews worked the land, dug wells, irrigated it, and made it habitable.

During the first war by the Arab states against the newly formed state of Israel, upwards of 750,000 Arabs fled Israel. Some Israeli Arabs still live there, but they are, of course, a minority. This is not “the occupied lands,” but the “right of return” lands. This is not GD so I won’t go into the arguments pro and con as to whether those Arabs should have the right to return to lands that they abandoned.

3

That is exactly what they consist of - the Gaza Bank + the West Bank.

It’s a bit sticky, but basically they are referred to as “occupied territories” because Israel occupied them after the Six Days’ War in 1967, taking Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan. Unlike the lightly populated Golan Heights, taken from Syria and annexed by Israel ( a move not widely accepted by the international community, but nonetheless it was done ) as a buffer zone, Israel has never laid legal claim to the Occupied Territories ( which are quite densely populated ). Legally the Territories’ status is amorphous. Jordan claimed and annexed the West Bank after taking it in 1948, but it was a claim only recognized by a few countries and Jordan has since surrendered all legal claims in favor of it’s Palestinian inhabitants ( first the PLO and then the current PA ). Egypt pretty much just squatted on the Gaza Strip ( which they also took in 1948 ), without laying any real claim to it. These territories, as well as Israel proper, were part of the British mandate territory that was to have been divided under a U.N. plan into an Arab and Jewish state, a plan of course undone by the outbreak of hositilities in 1948, which led to rather different borders than the U.N. had envisioned. Consequently in legal terms the West Bank and Gaza haven’t really belonged to any recognized national state since 1948. In theory Israel has recognized that the bulk of it should be converted into an independent Palestinian state, but the presense of Israeli settler colonies scattered within it and the pisspoor progress in peace negotiations presents some difficulties ( to make a truly monstrous understatement ).

  • Tamerlane
4

Oh, OK, so the Gaza strip and West Bank themselves are what the term occupied territories refer to. Thanks.

Well, if they bought part of the land, then won the rest in a war, (and if I understand things correctly, you get to keep land you win while defending yourself, whereas if you’re the aggressor/invador you have to give it back) then legally, the Israelis have total legal rights to the land and the term occupied territories is kind of misleading, in the since that the name gives an implication, or connotation that Israel is occupying land that isn’t really theirs.

5

Gah. Gaza Strip.

I will note that this…

…is not strictly accurate. Israel today consists only in small part of land actually owned by Jewish settlers before 1948 and though it was indeed the original Jewish plan to buy only wasteland and rehabilitate it ( and this was done ), this soon foundered in the face of wealthy, mostly ( though hardly solely ) absentee Arab landlords eager to sell fertile land ( their incomes had plummeted for a variety of reasons around WW I and selling land was a good way to maintain a strangled cash flow ) to the settlers, which did cause the displacement of at least some of the impoverished Arab peasantry, since Israeli settlers worked the land communally and neither required nor believed in maintaining the local servile workforce.

But I certainly agree that using the term “occupied territories” to refer to Israel proper is pure sophistry.

  • Tamerlane
6

Tamerlane, it seems you got your post in while I was responding to barbitu8’s post.
I’ll have to get back to your post later, but you’ve made some interesting points that I wasn’t aware of. Thanks.

7

As I understand international law as it exists today, no nation has the right to maintain its presence or maintain jurisdiction over any lands acquired by war, whether offensive or defensive. US does not have the right to maintain its presence in Iraq, but, of course, has the right to establish a government there and protectorate status until that is done, much as we did in Japan after WWII.

8

I don’t think that your use of the word “clearly” is appropriate, as what follows it (and which it is presumable based on) are disputed claims.

“Abandoned” is rather loaded term.

Joel

First of all, there is a distinction between Jews buying land, and Isreal buying land. Eurodisney is French land, even though it’s owned by a US company. Secondly, there is a distinction between annexation and occupation. Annexation is when you declare a piece of land to be part of your country. This creates certain obligations. For instance, now people born on that land are born in your country. You can no longer treat them as foreigners, as they aren’t foreigners. Occupation is when you say that a piece of land is under your control, but not yours. This allows for greater leeway; for instance, Israel has checkpoints set up on the border of the Occupied Territories, which Palestinians have to go through before being admitted to Israel. This is justified on the basis that Palestinians are foreigners (see above). Occupation is supposed to be a temporary state of affairs predicated on some crisis; once the crisis passes, the land is suppposed to be given back (Israel mantains that the continued terrorist attack constitute a continuation of the crisis). So, no, it’s not misleading, because by the very fact that they haven’t annexed the territories, Israel itself is declaring that this land isn’t really theirs.

9

In addition to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights are also referred to as “occupied territory” by those who use the term. And historically the Sinai Peninsula fell into this category, but it has since been returned to Egyptian control via treaty.

10

What’s the predecessor for “it”? Jews bought the lands. That’s indisputable.

“Abandoned” may be a “rather loaded term,” but they were not evicted, as were the Jews in the Arab lands. I seriously doubt that the Arab states would allow any right of return for the Jews.

11

Is abandonment the only possibility short of eviction? Let me suggest “fled” as a possibility as well.

12

  1. The Occupied Territories are the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem which, though it has been formally annexed by Israel is still legally part of the ocuppied territories and that annexation is not recognized outside of Israel).

  2. The 4th Geneva Convention lays down the responsibilty of occupying powers, etc and the status is further recognized in UNSC resolution 242. Israel has no legal rights to the land.

13

In 1948 the Jews owned 6-8% of the land (20% of the cultivable land) in Mandate Palestine (now Israel and the OTs) and the Arabs owned 46% of the land, the rest being owned by the government. Most of this land was purchased in the later manadate era (after 1930) not before 1900, in 1920 for example Jews only owned a quarter of the land they owned in 1948 (~5% of the cultivable land).

Prior to Zionist immigration it was certainly not unihabited and a population of over half a million, furthermore irrigation was not used as seasonale rains were the main source of water. Also the land brought by the Zionists in general was being used as farmland prior to this anyway which caused great resentment as Arabs farmers were evicted by absentee landlords and replaced by Jewish settlers.

In 1948 the many Arabs either fled from or were evicted by attacks from Jewish militias such as Irgun.

14

MC, we discussed the “irrigation” question in a prior thread, as you well know. To repeat what I said there, summarizing from a book *A History of Israel, from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time *, by Howard M. Sachar (1976):

In January 1882, a group of youthful Russians formed an emigration society, to be known as “Bilu” (a Hebrew biblical acrostic of “House of Jacob, let us go”). It was then that two Jerusalem Jews, Zalman Levontin and Joseph Feinberg, collected money from investors in Jerusalem and Europe, and acquired a tract of 100 acres, 8 miles from Jaffa. Tiny shacks were built and called “Rishon l’Zion”: First to Zion.

However, eaten alive by flies, robbed of their livestock by Bedouins, the settlers and their families began to wilt under disease, heat, and sheer exhaustion. It was then that Baron Edmund de Rothschild, offered 30,000 francs to drill a well at Rishon l’Zion. In the fall of 1884, Yechiel Pines, a Russian Jew who had emigrated to Palestine in 1878, brought with him moneys collected from various Chovevei Zion groups, and with this, and borrowed funds, purchased 2800 dunams (700 acres) of land near Yavneh, few miles from the coast.

In 1890, the tsar realized that emigration of Jews from Russia was a good thing for Russia. It was then that a society was formed in Odessa which raised $20,000 - $30,000 annually. As a result, in 1890-91, more than 3,000 Russian and Rumanian Jews departed for Palestine. However, the sheer hardships of farming in Palestine, a series of lethal malaria and typhoid epidemics, and the endless legal obstacles interposed by the Ottoman authorities, proved too heavy a burden for many hundreds of settlers.

Shortly after the turn of the century, Theodor Herzl was the instigator in more Jews going to Israel, digging wells and irrigating the land. By 1923 Haifa had become a glittering international city. Palestine, renamed Altneuland by its Jewish inhabitants, had other, equally flourishing cities and a thriving, irrigated agriculture. A race of Jewish fugitives had been transformed by orderly Zionist direction into a nation of successful farmers, industrialists, and businessmen. A new social and economic order had been created, too, based on a cooperative economy. Women enjoyed equal rights. Ample employment opportunities, medical facilities, health and old-age insurance benefits were available for all. Education was free. Arabs and Jews lived in friendship side by side.

15

Yes but your aseratins were wrong, most of land was purchased well after 1900 and as I said before irrigation was not important and in general the land was farmed before.

Your cite is very misleading as it seems to ludricously suggest that Palestine was majority Jewish in 1923 when Jews only made up about 12% of the population. It also suggests that Palestine was some sort of Utopia in 1923 which it certainly was not.

The problem is that you are relying on nationialist histories, by reading primary sources (for example the 5% of the cultivab;e land being owbned by Jews in 1920 comes from a book written in that year of which I have an orginal copy) you will find a very different picture.

16

You make it look like, post-1948, less than 10% of the land belonged to Jews. The truth is that the Arabs owned 46% of the land, and the Jews owned the rest, since government of the British Mandate in Palestine passed lawfully (Nov. 29 1947 + May 14 1948 UN resolutions) into the hands of the newly declared State of Israel.

Dan Abarbanel

17

No an yes, the land still belonged to whoever owned it in the first place, much of the land in what became Israel was confiscated from Arabs who had fled and the UN resolution did not give all the land held by the British government to Israel.

18

Hence the figure 46% Arab. As you said yourself, the rest belongs to the government du jour

No, but the actual distribution actually puts more Arab owned land in the Arab parts of the partition resolution, and Jewish+government owned land in the Jewish parts (e.g., the Negev, fully awarded to the Jewish state, had hardly any parts under Arab ownership). So on the whole, I think I probably actualy underestimated the portion of post-1948 Israel properly belonging to individual/organized Jews + the State of Israel
Also, re: governments, the 1947 resolution called for the creation of two states, essentially what we would now call Israel and (maybe the future-to-be) Palestine. The Jewish contingent acted on this resolution and the UN recognized the declared state of Israel. The Arab contingent, for their own reasons, chose not to act, hance NO legal Arab government in their part of the former British mandate, and therefore no transfer of land ownership to it.

Dan Abarbanel

19

There were sizeable Arab populations (which was part of the reason that it was rejecte by the Arabs) in the Jewish parts though they were created to give a Jewish majority, infact in the area that became Israel proper pre-1948 there was a majority Arab population.

20

(poking head cautiously into scary thread) Er, it’s my understanding that part of the disputedness of some of the lands the Jews bought stems from the fact that land titles were a little iffy in the area at the time, and it is thought that some may have been forged, or that some transactions took place without the full understanding of the peasant farmers or landowners involved.

One can debate whether or not this idea is valid, but that would take us over to Great Debate territory; the fact is that some of those land sales are, in fact, disputed. Factually speaking.

Land ownership is not always as cut-and-dried as we might like it to be. Witness the current disputes over ownership of lands originally “belonging” to Native Americans, acquired by European immigrants and the nascent US government under less-than-crystal-clear circumstances.

Please don’t throw things at me.