|
Questions and answers about the permanent Israeli presence in the West Bank
|
|
|
The "occupation" of a country is a specific legal term in international law, referring to a foreign military force establishing effective control over the territory of another state, even without resistance. This control, however, must be provisional and limited to areas where the authority of the hostile army can be effectively exercised, not a full takeover of the entire nation. The occupying power has duties, such as restoring public order and maintaining existing laws, while respecting the rights of the local population. |
|
A settler is a persoon who decided to leave his native country to build a new permannent life elsewhere but peacefully, and who is not seeking to take someone else's land. In fact, modern migrants can be considered as settlers. A colonist is one who decided to leave his native country but to take possession of someone else's land first then start building a new life. That is why the Israelis and those who came from around the world are colonists. |
|
A permanent, irreversible presence, especially one that includes settlements de facto colonies, is a violation of the law of occupation and a step towards annexation. Under international humanitarian law, occupation is supposed to be temporary, and the establishment of permanent structures and settlements by the occupying power is forbidden. When an occupying power seeks to incorporate territory into its own, or creates irreversible facts on the ground through permanent structures, it is a form of de facto or de jure annexation, which is strictly prohibited under international law. |
|
It's not an occupation if there is no actual, effective control over the territory by the foreign power, even if forces are present. Occupation ceases when the occupying forces are driven out or, critically, when they no longer exercise authority and function as a government in the territory, even if they retain a military presence. |
|
In relation to Gaza and the West Bank, in international law, the right to resist is closely related to the principle of self-determination. It is widely recognized that a right to self-determination arises in situations of colonial domination and foreign occupation. So, occupied people have the full right to resist the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. If these people chose to form an armed resistance, they must distinguish themselves from the unarmed civilian population, or based on articles 43 & 44 of the Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, at least carry their weapons openly during attacks and deployments. |
|
A civilian court of an occupying power may only exercise criminal jurisdiction over the occupied population for acts posing a threat to its security* or an obstacle to applying the law of occupation, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. The occupying power must prioritize maintaining public order and essential services, and any laws it introduces or modifies must primarily serve these purposes and comply with international humanitarian law, not the occupying power's own interests. However, resistance against occupation cannot be considered a crime
*) May not include the protection of citizens illegally transfered into the occupied territory. |
|
A military court of an occupying power is allowed to try people in occupied territory if local courts cannot function, or for breaches of the occupying power's security laws*, provided these courts are non-political, properly constituted, and hold sessions within the occupied territory. Civilians directly participating in hostilities or committing violations of the laws of war can also be prosecuted, but POWs cannot be tried for the mere act of fighting. However, the Palestinian Authority operates under its own criminal law, such as its Penal Code. In addition, "the Palestinian Authority also imposes the death penalty pursuant to the PLO Revolutionary Penal Code, of 1979." The PNA utilizes both military and special, state security courts for most death penalty cases. *) May not include the protection of citizens illegally transfered into the occupied territory. The occupying power's security laws in the West Bank are illegal as they are for the benefit of the people it has illegally transferred into the occupied territory, which is a war crime. That makes the Israeli military courts political thus obsolete, and a violation of international law. |
|
An occupying power can primarily make laws related to restoring and maintaining public order, ensuring the security of its forces and the population, and applying the Fourth Geneva Convention (which requires specific measures for protecting the civilian population). However, these new laws cannot be permanent, must not introduce lasting changes to the occupied territory's social or economic status, and must be balanced with the needs of the local population, with the occupying power not allowed to use its authority to further its own political or economic interests beyond its military needs. |
|
No, an occupying power is not allowed to make laws that only protect people it has illegally transferred into the occupied territory; in fact, this action is a violation of international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits such population transfers and thus any laws made to protect them. The purpose of occupation law is to maintain public order and civil life while respecting existing laws and the needs of the protected population, not to benefit the occupying power or further its own interests in the territory. |
|
No, an occupying power is not allowed to implement an apartheid system in an occupied territory; it is a crime against humanity prohibited under international law. Apartheid involves a system of legalized racial segregation and discrimination that systematically deprives a racial group of their rights and freedoms, and its prohibition takes precedence over other bodies of international law, such as the law of occupation. International law requires states to suppress and punish apartheid, and to neither recognize nor assist in maintaining such a system. |
|
International law classifies armed settlers as civilians unless they directly participate in hostilities; they are not legitimate military targets unless they engage in attacks, in which case they lose their civilian protection. |
|
In relation to the West Bank, perfidy is using the status of civilian and or using (unmarked) civilian vehicles with the intent to betray the occupied people's confidence and then kill, injure, or capture them. |
|
International law, particularly Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, prohibits perfidy, defining it as acts that invite an adversary's confidence to believe they are entitled to protection under the law, with the intent to betray that confidence for the purpose of killing, injuring, or capturing them. Examples include feigning injury or civilian status, and misusing protected emblems like the Red Cross or United Nations insignia. Perfidy is distinct from permissible ruses of war, which do not involve abusing the rules of international law. |
|
Seizing a house from an occupied family is considered a war crime, specifically a form of pillage and forced displacement, both of which are prohibited under international humanitarian law. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from transferring its own civilians into the occupied territory and from seizing property in this manner, as it aims to prevent long-term territorial changes and protect the rights of the occupied population. |
GLOSM.EU maintains the view that new countries only have a legitimate right to exist if they are formed through secession from an existing country. Formation forced through invasion by groups of people from one or more other countries, and belonging to these countries on another continent, while there is either no or no longer a historical continuity with desired land as proposed by these groups of people, it cannot be considered legitimate, no matter the argument they may have. The latter has been the issue since 1947, as it is about replacing an existing land with a formation that was desired on another continent. "Israel" is by ideological formation invented on the content of Europe, and brought into an existing land even when it was under mandate, which is not the same as colony, the League of Nation had given to the British. The ideological formation was by exploiting the given mandate, as the groups of people involved do not have a historical continuity with the land they have been colonizing since 1948. See tabs 'No Historical Continuity 1, and 'No Historical Continuity 2' on this website. In the West Bank, there is military occupation, but by a civilian leadership seated in a part of a territory that has been colonized since May 1948. Governed by international humanitarian law (IHL), occupation is supposed to be a temporary situation with the goal of eventually restoring control to the original sovereign. However, in the West Bank, there is no occupation but the permanent hostile, effective control by a foreign power, over a territory that is not its own sovereign territory, but seeks to gain sovereignty over it.
|
|
On this page, we clarify why violation of the Rules Of Belligerent Occupation in the West Bank contains war crimes and crimes against humanity |
|
|
Acts of war constitute to war crimes because the armed occupying belligerent has been documented for committing terrorism, taking occupied civilians as hostages, torturing civilians, and plundering property. |
|
Airstrikes are a war crime as they violate the principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), because Israelis attack occupied civilians and destroy non-military objects. The status of occupying power doesn't change these fundamental rules, but it imposes additional responsibilities on the occupying force to protect the civilian population and their property. |
|
Annexation is a war crime as it is about the permanent continuation of the now illegal Israeli occupation because it violates fundamental principles of international law, specifically the prohibition of the use of force, the right to self-determination of peoples, and the principle of non-acquisition of territory by force. While an occupation is a temporary state with specific rules for the occupying power, the annexation by the Israelis is to permanently acquire territory, thereby extinguishing the occupied state's sovereignty.
|
|
This practice is recognized as both a war crime and a crime against humanity under international law, regardless of occupation. International humanitarian law, specifically Article 85(4)(c) of Additional Protocol I (API) to the Geneva Conventions, explicitly lists "practices of apartheid" as a grave breach. It is also a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
|
|
A violent crackdown on protests by the occupied civilian population, and committed by the Israeli occupying belligerent is a war crime, as it violates international humanitarian law, such as by using excessive force, targeting protected persons, and employing prohibited tactics like collective punishments or terrorism. While the Israeli occupying belligerent have the right to maintain order, not maintaining "security" to protect illegally transferred people, their actions are strictly limited, and any act of violence against the occupied civilian population that is disproportionate, unnecessary, or a violation of their fundamental rights, and constitute a war crime. |
|
In the West Bank, forced evictions constitute the war crime of unlawful transfer, and is committed in the context of a systematic attack directed against the occupied civilian population, therefore constitute the crime against humanity of forcible transfer. |
|
Transferring a part of the occupying power's own civilian population into the occupied territory is a war crime under international law because it constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, aims to change the occupied territory's demographic composition and permanence of occupation, and undermines the rights and safety of the protected civilian population in that territory. This act is a form of ethnic cleansing, prohibited by customary international law and codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly forbids such transfers by an occupying power. |
|
Incitement to destroy is a crime under international law which prohibits inciting (encouraging) the commission of destruction. An extreme form of hate speech, incitement to destroy is an inchoate offense and is theoretically subject to prosecution even if destruction does not occur, although charges have never been brought in an international court without mass violence having occurred. "Direct and public incitement to resort to destruction" was forbidden by the Genocide Convention in 1948. Incitement to destruction is often cloaked in metaphor and euphemism and may take many forms beyond direct advocacy, including dehumanization and accusation in a mirror. |
|
Restricting the freedom of movement of civilians by forced displacement is a war crime under international humanitarian law (IHL) and can be prosecuted under the Rome Statute. While not all restrictions are illegal, forcible transfer or deportation of the civilian population by the Israelis is prohibited. The monitoring and the documentation could not find any justification that allows limited exceptions for security, as the latter concerns the protection of own illegally transferred people while no imperative military reason exist. Restriction of the freedom of movement against the occupied people is by mentioned methods in the practice of apartheid; as a retaliatory measure in response to resistance, therefore a violation of IHL and constitutes a war crime.
|
|
Targeting and destroying non-military property is a war crime because international humanitarian law protects civilian objects and property. Extensive destruction of property, unless justified by military necessity, is also explicitly prohibited and considered a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a war crime, especially in occupied territories. This prohibition exists to protect the civilian population, their history, and their way of life, and includes prohibitions against attacks on cultural property, foodstuffs, and installations vital to civilian survival. |
|
Burning, looting, plunder, and vandalism are considered war crimes because they involve the unlawful and willful destruction or appropriation of property, often without military necessity, and are prohibited by international humanitarian law (IHL) under agreements like the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. These actions harm civilians and public order, violate the principle of respecting private and public property, and undermine the values of an ordered society that international law seeks to uphold even during conflict. |
|
VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF BELLIGERENT OCCUPATION How the "war" in Gaza resonates in violations committed in the West Bank
|
||
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
| WAR CRIMES | ||
|
||
|
All our projects starts with this page. You can skip this page if the content is familiar to you. Let us begin with something that everyone knows, or maybe not everyone, as current generations did not grow up in an era when there was no video but celluloid. And even then, when there were videos (VHS and Betamax), there was no YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, TikTok, or Instagram. The first Internet video hosting site was ShareYourWorld.com, founded in 1997.
There are many definitions of history. However, the simplest way to explain it is to use the pictured images. A celluloid film consists of a series of frames. Each frame is part of a scene, which, in return, may be part of a series of scenes. They all together form what is called a sequence. So, a movie is built up by a series of sequences. If you watch the whole film, you will see a chronology of frames, scenes, and sequences. Visualizing history is similar to this, meaning that you can imagine history as a complete movie unless you cut it into pieces to remove frames, scenes, or even a whole sequence that you don't want people to watch. Like every movie, any event must have a beginning, as nothing happens in a vacuum. There is always a main cause or root, which always lies in the very past. And so it is about the West Bank.
|
In today's video technology, you don't need to stretch the movie. It's already done while you load it into a video editor.|
In 1947, European Zionists invaded what was then British Mandatory Palestine, and started first a war against the British then uprooting and mass killing the Palestinian population, that is known as Nakba. The land, already created by the British Arthur Balfour in 1916, was taken by brutal force. The partition of the land, as proposed by the Swedish UN diplomat, Folke Bernadotte, rejected by European terrorists who assassinated the diplomat on September 17, 1948. What has been invented in 1917 by Arthur Balfour in 1917, and by brutal force renamed into a name derrived from the name of a tribe that did the same, is inhabit by foreigners with those like:.
In the context of the claim by followers of Zionism being Semitic: none of them is a Semitic person, as they are all from a migrant, settler or colonist. Like the Americans, today, the Israelis are a people from around the world |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Gaza and the West Bank form together the State of Palestine, despite political differences between Hamas and Fatah. "Israel shall have the overriding responsibility for security; for the purpose of protecting Israelis and confronting the threat of terrorism." But, collected videos are proving that terrorism is by those who were illegally transferred from colonized historic Palestine to the West Bank.
|
|
GLOSM.EU maintains the view that the legitimacy of a country can only if it is a land that has no inhabitants native to the land; if the first population is native to the land or is formed through secession. The international humanitarian law (IHL) states: occupation is supposed to be a temporary situation with the goal of eventually restoring control to the original sovereign. However, in the West Bank, there is no occupation but the permanent hostile, effective control by a foreign power, over a territory that is not its own sovereign territory, but seeks to gain sovereignty over it. |
|
Since October 2023, those who have been called "settlers," but are colonists, have taken the opportunity to take advantage on what their leadership is doing in Gaza. Each time when occupied people try to resist against attacks by colonists, the occupying armed belligerent reacts with large scale actions, that we are documenting in this way. However, the media reports these actions as "raids," while the occupied have been exposed to large scale actions for years. This is contrary to the explanation of what "raids" means: "a rapid surprise attack on an enemy by troops, aircraft, or other armed forces." For years, Palestinians in the West Bank know that the armed occupying belligerent will be deployed into the streets of the West Bank when anyone of the occupied people has decided actively to resist occupation, which is a right as defined in the articles 43 & 44 of the Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions. So, how is it a surprise attack? This reminds us of Amsterdam and other big cities in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation. Jews knew that they were persecuted. Those who decided to resist the Nazi occupation were also forced to look for secret shelter places to keep themselves secure and safe. There were also non-Jews who provided these resistants safe places. When the Nazis couldn't find the person they were after, they simply rounded up all Jews living in the neighborhood where the reisistant came from, and deported them to concentration camps. These actions were described in Dutch history schoolbooks as "razzias" It is exactly what the armed occupying belligerent does in the West Bank. The Germans are avoiding to speak about "razzias," as the term reminds them of their own past. |
|
All our projects are self-funded. We do not run donation campaigns, nor do we ask for donations. The website you're visiting is ... let us say … on a middle class hosting package to keep the monthly costs low. It is for this reason why we do not publish videos found on the internet. We make video overviews to show you what has been collected and documented. This minimizes the use of webspace. |