Israel is not an Occupier

The fact that the entire world considers Judea and Samaria as well as eastern Jerusalem to be occupied, means nothing. The world depends upon Arab oil, is afraid of muslim terrorists and yes it is also anti-Semitic. Just because most of the world claims these are occupied territories, which it does so based on the self-interests of nations to curry favor with the Arab-muslim world, doesn’t make it fact. Who exactly is being occupied considering Palestine never existed as a sovereign entity and that Judea and Samaria had been previously occupied by Jordan, and that Israel acquired the territories in a war of self-defense and also considering that Jews had lived there for centuries prior to being ethnically cleansed by Jordan in 1948 and the fact that Judea and Samaria was part of the original Palestine mandate set aside for the reconstitution of a Jewish homeland? The claim of Israeli occupation is not based on any legal definition but rather based on political considerations. It's not difficult to understand why the world sides with the Arabs who constitute a population in the hundreds of millions with 21 states that control most of the world's energy resources as opposed to a miniscule state of six million Jews in which no one is economically dependent upon.

Why Is Israel’s Presence in the Territories Still Called “Occupation”?
Avinoam Sharon1


Executive Summary

When an armed force holds territory beyond its own national borders, the term “occupation” readily comes to mind. However, not all the factual situations that we commonly think of as “occupation” fall within the limited scope of the term “occupation” as defined in international law. Not every situation we refer to as “occupation” is subject to the international legal regime that regulates occupation and imposes obligations upon the occupier.
The term “occupation” is often employed politically, without regard for its general or legal meaning. The use of the term “occupation” in political rhetoric reduces complex situations of competing claims and rights to predefined categories of right and wrong. The term “occupation” is also employed in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to advance the argument that Israel bears ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinians, while limiting or denying Israel’s right to defend itself against Palestinian terror, and relieving the Palestinian side of responsibility for its own actions and their consequences. The term is also employed as part of a general assault upon Israel’s legitimacy, in the context of a geopolitical narrative that has little to do with Israel’s status as an occupier under international law.
Iraq was occupied by the Coalition forces from the spring of 2003 until June 28, 2004, at which time authority was handed over to the Iraqi Interim Government. At that point, Coalition forces remained in Iraq, but Iraq was no longer deemed occupied. If handing over authority to a Coalition-appointed interim government ended the occupation of Iraq, would the same not hold true for the establishment of the Palestinian Authority and Israel?
Under the Interim Agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization of September 28, 1995, it would seem that at least those areas placed under the effective control of the Palestinian Authority, and from which Israel had actually withdrawn its military forces, could no longer be termed “occupied” by Israel. Moreover, since the continued presence of Israeli troops in the area was agreed to and regulated by the Agreement, that presence should no longer be viewed as an occupation.
The withdrawal of all Israeli military personnel and any Israeli civilian presence in the Gaza Strip, and the subsequent ouster of the Palestinian Authority and the takeover of the area by a Hamas government, surely would constitute a clear end of the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Nevertheless, even though Gaza is no longer under the authority of a hostile army, and despite an absence of the effective control necessary for providing the governmental services required of an occupying power, it is nevertheless argued that Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza.


“For false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
Plato, Phaedo

Introduction

There is a joke that is currently making the rounds about an Israeli going through passport control at JFK. The immigration officer asks: “Occupation?” The Israeli says: “No. I’m just visiting.” The joke is premised upon a general perception of Israel as an occupier. That perception is so pervasive in regard to Israel and Israel alone, that the joke will not work if you substitute any other nationality.2 But does that perception accurately portray Israel, even after all the regional developments brought by the peace process? And if it is not accurate, why does it persist so tenaciously? In order to address those questions, we must first examine the meaning of the term “occupation.”

When an armed force holds territory beyond the borders of its own nation, “occupation” is the term that most readily comes to mind. It may be difficult to think of a more felicitous term to describe the factual situation.3 But not all the broad spectrum of factual situations that we commonly think of as “occupation” fall within the limited scope of the term “occupation” as defined in international law. Not every situation we refer to as “occupation” is subject to the international legal regime that regulates occupation and imposes obligations upon the occupier.

A striking example of this dual usage of the term “occupation” is provided by the Army of Occupation Medal. In 1946, the United States War Department issued a medal bearing the words “Army of Occupation” to recognize soldiers who had served in post-war Germany and Japan. Yet, neither Germany nor Japan was deemed to be occupied territory subject to the international law of occupation.4 Indeed, when Iraqi President Jalal Talibani stated: “Iraq is not occupied, but there are foreign forces on its soil, which is different,”5 he correctly expressed an often-misunderstood distinction.

The distinction was also made by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in regard to Iraq. As Swiss jurist Daniel Thürer has explained, Iraq was occupied by the Coalition forces from the spring of 2003 until June 28, 2004, at which time authority was handed over to the Iraqi Interim Government.6 At that point, Coalition forces remained in Iraq, but Iraq was no longer occupied. While this maintains the distinction between our casual use of the term “occupation” and its strict legal sense, it raises an interesting question. The Coalition occupation of Iraq would not seem substantively different than the Allied occupation of Germany or the American occupation of Japan, which are generally not deemed to have constituted occupation under international law. On its face, the same reasoning that supports the prevailing opinion that neither Germany nor Japan was occupied should support the view that Iraq was not occupied in the legal sense of the term.7 Even if that were not the case, if handing over authority to a Coalition-appointed interim government ended the occupation of Iraq, would the same not hold true in regard to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority and, a fortiori, following the Palestinian general election in 1996? Why would the same distinction not apply to Israel?

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