Not sure if thats the right way to put it, but what I mean is this. Everyone says that Israel is occupying land that should be palestine (ok, not everyone, but thats not what I want to start). So when does Occupied land no longer become anything but part of the country that is occupying it? When they kill everyone who use to live there? When the former owners/occupiers say fine its yours? Israel has had some of this land since 1967, thats 37 or so years. How much longer to they have to occupy it before its recognized as theres? Is it all just a UN thing?
In the real world, it’s when other countries recognize your sovereignty. In the unfathomable world of the Middle East, it will only be when everybody alive today dies.
China occupies and completely runs Tibet, which some people continue to see as illegal, and hasn’t played a hand in Taiwan for over 50 years but the world pretends that Taiwan is still a part of China. Rational rules do not apply to realpolitik.
Occupied land becomes rightful territory when no one with clout disagrees with your contention that the land is your rightful territory. Simply declaring the land your rightful territory doesn’t make it so, witness what happened when Saddam declared Kuwait the 20th province of Iraq. However, when the Soviets declared that the portion of Germany they occupied after WWII was now an independent country, no one in the west was in a position to tell them they were wrong. And there are several countries that are sovereign in theory but in practice are run as appendages of the occupying country, Syria and Lebanon being exhibit A. And of course, the opposite holds true, there are parts of Pakistan that are outside the authority of the central government, many parts of African states that are essentially autonomous, or places like Taiwan that China considers a Chinese province, and Taiwan considers a Chinese province, but are de facto independent.
If no indigenous independece or resistance movement exists, and no political opposition to annexation within the ruling political body of the annexing country, and no external opposition to annexation by other countries exists, then you’ve conquered the region. However, just because such opposition does not currently exist doesn’t meant that it won’t arise sometime in the future.
So basically there is no legal defintion, even inthge murky world of international law? Its just whether or not your bg and bad enough that no one can say no? Or if the people in the territory say cool, we like this?
And, when everybody left after that who has been taught to hate the other side has died. And so on…
Well, one prerequisite is, presumably, that the occupying country WANTS it to bcome part of it…in other words, to annex it. Israel has never annexed the West Bank and Gaza. No one will “recognize” it’s Israel’s if Israel doesn’t recognize it’s Israel.
I’d take it a little further:
“Occupied territory”, “Independent provinces” and a hundred other international name-games apply exactly as long as no one is willing to fight you for it – and that is subject to change: a claim can sit unexploited and a territory can consider itself independent for half a century or more, before the tanks roll in, and in the end, all that matters is who wins, and who else is willing to fight about it.
Our schoolbooks say that Texas was an independent country, effective with it’s declaration of independence of 1836. However, there is ample documentary evidence that The Texas Republic itself never considered it a settled issue. For one thing, that declaration, signed by representatives of 17 towns as far from Mexico as they could get (they would have gone further away , but the US had just assigned the territories north to Indian reservations.) was just one of at least four declarations of Texas independence that I can think of. If the Texas Assembly thought they were independent, why did they declare independence again the following year? Further evidence of Texas’ own beliefs are found throught their diplomatic communications with Mexico, England and France (including the secret treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed alongside the public one, which releases General Santa Ana on the condition that he go back to Mexico City and lobby for Texas independence)
Usually, you aren’t independent until you’re recognized by the major nations (Texas never was, but not for lack of constant trying) or you win your War of Independence (Texas was still fighting when it joined the US). However the US Constitution wouldn’t allow us to annex a state that belonged to someone else, so in a matter of days, we recognized the Texas Republic, adopted it, accepted its application for statehood, and told Mexico “back off, she’s mine!”. Mexico didn’t, and the War of Texas Independence segued into the Mexican American War.
Similarly, Hawaii had been independent, recognized by the European powers even before it was unified from independent kingdoms by King Kamehameha in 1795. It eventially became a constitutional monarchy that was overthrown by an American-led group (Sanford Dole, who became its first President) assisted by US troops. The Hawaiian republic then petitioned to become, not a state, but a lowly possession of the US. The Blount Commission, appointed by President Grover Cleveland, ruled the revolution a travesty, illegally abetted by US military forces and Benjamin Harrison’s Minister to Hawaii (John L Stevens), and completely improper. But we didn’t give it back, and we didn’t make it a state until 1959.
Anyone want to arm wrestle the US for them? I think the Japanese would have liked the still-not-a-state Hawaii in WWII. If they’d won that match, it’d be theirs.
I’m not just picking on the US. Remember Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, on the basis that it had always been a Iraqi province? That was a claim that was older than Israel; it simply didn’t matter until Saddam was willing to fight for it.
How about China and Taiwan? Again, Taiwan is independent untill someone wants to fight about it, and then … history will belong to the victors.
Henry II, King of England: The Vexin’s mine.
Philip II, King of France: By what authority?
Henry II: It’s got my troops all over it; that makes it mine.
And many Palestinians include the state of Israel in that definition. But that’s another matter and one for GD.
That is the nature of international law. Practices commonly accepted by the great and middle powers.
Actually, a basic cornerstone of most “international” law (because there really is no such thing as international law, only bi- and multi-lateral treaties, commonly accepted practice, etc) is that land taken and occupied by force can never be legitimized.
After World War II the Soviet Union annexed eastern Karelia; all of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; the northern portion of East Prussia; eastern Poland (or western Byelorussia/Belarus and western Ukraine, depending on how you look at it); Ruthenia; Moldavia/Moldova; and southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Poland in turn annexed large areas from Germany to compensate for the loss of territory in the east. The U.S. never recognized the incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the U.S.S.R., and Japan and Russia are still disputing a portion of the Kurils, but by and large those annexations went unchallenged. (That the Soviet Union later broke up had nothing to do with any principle of perpetual non-legitimization of territory taken by force. The northern half of historic East Prussia is still part of Russia; the borders of Poland have not–fortunately–been re-re-drawn, etc.)
Of course, if you go back far enough into history, just about every country in the world acquired its present territory by force, or broke away–often by force–from some larger country or empire which in turn had established what would become that country’s borders by force.
Actually, Henry II married Eleanor (Philip’s ex-wife) which gave him what he didn’t inherit from William the Conqueror. Henry II was the King of England (first as a matter of fact) and also a subject of Philip II.
Looking at history for the answer to the question would show that a better question is “How long can one hold onto territory?” History shows that in most cases it is not very long. China and Egypt are the one’s that have been most successful. The US doesn’t rate more than a being a fledgling. France and England were only getting started back in Henry II and Philip II’s time, which was only about 1000 years ago.
Concerning that little piece of ground on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean the Jews were expelled from there about 150 A.D. and then returned in what (1948)?
Eleanor was not heiress to the Vexin and I don’t believe Henry II seized it by force of arms, either. The Vexin was an attachement to the Duchy of Normandy that guarded its eastern frontier. The southern or ‘Capetian Vexin’, south of the Epte, had gradually become part of the French royal demesnes. The northern or ‘Norman Vexin’ had been further acquired by Louis VII between 1144 and 1151 in exchange for recognizing first Geoffrey of Anjou as Duke of Normandy and then his son Henry ( the future Henry II ).
Henry II got the ‘Norman Vexin’ back as the dowry from the marriage of Princess Margaret of France to Prince Henry ‘the Young King’, heir apparent ( later in a moment of political turmoil he claimed the deal had been for the whole of Vexin, but only as a threat I believe ). Since Prince Henry died young, widowing Margaret, it became a point of contention, changing hands a couple of times ( after Henry II’s death ) before finally being definitively acquired by the French Crown when Philip conquered Normandy in 1204.
- Tamerlane
Oh yes, and it was Louis VII who had been married to Eleanor, not his son Philip II ‘Augustus’.
1137 - the future Louis VII and Elanor are married.
1151 - Louis VII comes into possesion of the whole of the Vexin.
1152 - Louis divorces Eleanor.
1153 - Henry, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjouy, Maine and Touraine, marries Eleanor.
1154 - Henry becomes King of England as Henry II.
1155 - Henry II’s eldest surviving son Henry, is born ( his eldest period, who born in 1153, was Prince William who died at the age of three ). Followed by Mathilda in 1156, Richard in 1157, Geoffrey in 1158, Eleanor in 1161 and finally John in 1167.
1158 - the infants Princess Margaret and Prince Henry are promised in marriage.
1160 - Actual marriage takes place, Henry II gains Vexin.
1180 - Louis VII dies and is succeeded by his son Philip II.
1183 - Henry ‘the Young King’ dies at 28.
1187 - Fighting breaks out betwen Philip II and Henry II over a number of issues, one of which is the Vexin.
1189 - Henry II dies, Richard I ‘Lionheart’ ascends English throne. Dustup with Philip resolved and Vexin becomes dowry of Princess Alice who is to marry Richard. But marriage never takes place.
1189-1192 - Richard and Philip crusade. Philip returns early in 1191.
1192 - Richard seized by Duke Leopold V of Austria while returing from Crusade and held for over a year. Philip conspires with John in Richard’s absense, gaining Normandy and the Vexin in return for support.
1199 - As a result of Richard’s successful campaigning 1196-1199, the Treaty of Vernon restores the Vexin to English Crown. Shortly thereafter Richard killed campaigning and John ascends the throne.
1204 - Philip II conquers Normandy and the Vexin from John.
- Tamerlane
I stand corrected concerning who she was married to first and about Vexin. Honestly, I’ve never heard of Vexin and confused it with Aquitaine. I may have toeat these words but I believe that [Aquitaine](http://216.239.39.104/translate_c?hl=en&u=http://www.aquitaine.france3.
fr/info/&prev=/search%3Fq%3DAquitaine%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-
8%26sa%3DG) was far more important than [**
Vexin**](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.parcs-
naturels-regionaux.tm.fr/lesparcs/vexia.html&prev=/
search%3Fq%3DVexin%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DG), since it gave Henry control of all of western France, below Normandy.
Google “Waitangi Treaty”.
This is the founding docoment of NZ, signed in 1840. It is still very much an active docoment in terms of changing land titles.
Wrong on both accounts. Although the Romans slaughtered as many as 600,000 Jews between 70CE and 135CE, and enslaved 300,000 more, a few thousand somehow remained on in the country, primarily in Galilee, where they farmed their land and plied their trades. In the late Roman era, this decimated community actually managed a revival. For three centuries, the towns and farms extended as far as the coastal plain. During this period, the Palestinian Talmud was compiled. Moreover, the Jewish population sustained its growth well beyond the Arab conquest in the 7th century, and even under the Seljuk Turks, reached 300,000 inhabitants by the year 1000. The promising interlude ended abruptly and quite terribly with the arrival of the Crusaders. The butchery of Jews was so extensive under Christian rule, that in 1169, only a thousand families were still alive.
Eighteen years later, however, Saladin, sultan of Egypt, won a crushing victory over the Latin Kingdoms and began the process that ultimately evicted the last of the Crusaders a century later. Subsequently, under a tolerant Moslem regime, pilgrimages of Jews from overseas augmented the tiny Palestinian remnant. The Spanish expulsion decree in 1492, propelled tens of thousands of Shephardim Jews into all corners of the Mediterranen world, and not less than 8,000 into Palestine, and their arrival corresponded with the Ottoman conquest of the Levant (1517), and in its first century the rule of the Turks proved benign. After this first century, however, the Turks made life difficult for Jews and Christians alike. By 1837, no more than 6,000 Jews lived in the four holy cities.
It was around then, that the concept of Zionism took hold. Due to oppression in Russia and elsewhere in Europe, 25,000 Jews entered Palestine from 1882-1903. Several large tracts were purchased by the Chovevei Zion (formerly known as the Odessa Committee), which were then resold to settlers or land companies. 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, and many of the settlers emigrated for Europe.
Born in 1860, the son of an affluent banking family, Theodore Herzl became an internationally known author and reporter by 1895. He was also preoccupied with the Jewish question. He was driven to build a Jewish nation, and to that end mass propaganda was needed. He also learned much of parliamentary techniques during his years covering the French Chamber of Deputies. The First Zionist Organization was formed. By 1923, Haifa had become a glittering international city and a model of technological advancement. A race of Jewish fugitives had been transformed by orderly Zionist direction into a nation of successful farmers, industrialists, and businessmen.
[Source: A History of Israel by Howard M. Sachar, 1976]
I note that the OP concerned “occupation,” but recent comments have revolved upon annexation, two entirely different matters.
<Teaching a man to fish>I don’t pretend this always works, but this is what I did when I read the question. What answer do I expect? Is there a law? If so, someone must enforce it. Who can enforce a law on a country? Only other countries, and notably the big ones. This happens to give the right answer.
Don’t be afraid to ask, but don’t be afraid to guess either.
In this case, I’d suggest a good analogy would be a number of people on an island together. The only laws would be ones they agreed on and were willing to enforce.
However, I in principle support treaties, etc, codifying relations, which are enforced by the majority of nations because they value the stability. This could possibly control the large nations, because they don’t want to rock the boat.</tamtf>