Israel as most of you know was recently condemned by the UN for continuing settlement activity on the West Bank, calling it a “flagrant violation of international law”.
But what international laws govern territory taken in war? Under what circumstances can a conquering country claim it’s theirs and have it recognized as such? Is Tibet legally a part of China? Is the Crimea legally part of Russia? What about Kashmir? Is there a legal difference between disputed territories and conquered or occupied territories?
Or is international law just whatever the security council says it is?
In other words, the entire world hates Jews. Etc, etc, ad naumeum. But you would say that when it involves a whole lot of free land and a lot of self-interests to serve.
tbh, the issue isn’t so much the occupying power as the rights of the occupied and oppressed people.
Indeed, it is only in the Israeli case where suddenly the Americans argue in a different fashion, for the Cowboy wild west law…
In another case, in the wider MENA region there is the Western Sahara where there is also a refusal to recognize an annexation claim (the annexation by the Morocco of the old Spanish Sahara on the Spanish unilateral withdrawal at the end of the Franco era), and this despite that unlike the Israeli case, the Moroccan government has given the full and unrestricted citizenship to the Saharans. But the ongoing basis of the refusal of the Moroccan authorities to hold a confirming referendum with the indigenous population (as the two sides can not come to an agreement on who can qualify as the indigenous - a problem not 100percent political as there was explusions and flight of the near 100percent nomade population in the Franco era, and the nomadic tribes extended and transited across the colonial boundaries drawn up in the European capitals…).
So we can see in an ‘Arab’ case that the international community,although having no great enthusiasm for the idea of the Western Sahara to be a country, refusing also to recognize, even in the instance where the occupying country gives the full citizenship
The case of the Kashmir, both the Pakistani and the Indian sides do not deny the populations in their zones the citizenship and the general rights of the population as a general matter, it is not comparable at all. (I do not have the right knowledge to comment on the Tibet).
The Israel is seeking a special treatment as it does not either want to commit to the obligations of an annexation and thus the obligations to the population in term of the equality of the treatment and the access to citizenship , nor does it wish to renounce its slow drip drip drip annexation of the best lands in actual fact.
I personally have no use whatsoever for so-called international “law.” It’s a masturbatory exercise in wishful thinking by people who don’t understand how the world really works.
For an example, did you know that every Allied soldier in WW2 was a war criminal? And that the war itself was illegal? Now that sounds like a ludicrous statement–and in point of fact, it is. But that’s what international “law” says. The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 “outlawed” war.
The whole world would be much better off if we could convince people to forget about the whole idiotic concept.
When the United States Senate approved the treaty, it explicitly stated it did not prohibit countries fighting in self-defense. As Japan and Germany both declared war on the United States in 1941, we were not in violation of the treaty by fighting.
Much more to the point, international law does not generally, unless expressly stated AND incorporated into a state’s own legal system; create liabilities for individuals. It applies to nation states. And the Kellog-Briand pact did not do so.
Because Britain’s treaty obligation was to protect Poland from invasion by any “European power”. Under the terms of the treaty, the USSR was not a European power, only Germany was.
The UK therefore had a treaty obligation to declare war on Germany once it invaded Poland, but did not have a treaty obligation to declare war on the USSR.
Not only that, but Israel refuses to even call them “occupied terrorities” because settlement building in occupied territory is explicitly illegal and maps in Israel don’t typically even have the green line on them.