Diplomats say Canada and Australia are also helping Israel exert pressure on Switzerland and other states to thwart confab on conditions in West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Israel and the United States are trying to dissuade the nearly 200 states that are party to the Fourth Geneva Convention from convening a special session in mid-December to address conditions in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Israeli and Western diplomats told Haaretz Wednesday.
Government officials believe that convention sponsor Switzerland has come under strong pressure from the Palestinians and Arab states, and is expected to issue invitations to the conference within days.
In early April, following Israel’s refusal to free the last scheduled group of Palestinian prisoners, and its announcement that it would build 700 homes in East Jerusalem, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decided to sign, in the Palestinian state’s name, on 15 international conventions and ask to join them. One of them was the Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with protecting the civilian population in fighting areas or occupied territories.
This move brought to a head the crisis that led to the collapse of U.S. efforts to extend the talks between Israel and the Palestinians. A few weeks later the Palestinians and Arab League asked Switzerland officially to call a conference of the convention signatories to discuss the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as the damage Israel caused civilians in Gaza.
So far four attempts have been made to convene the Fourth Geneva Convention – all of them in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The last attempt was made in 2009 after Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.
However, after consultations of the Swiss Foreign Ministry at the time, it was decided there wasn’t sufficiently broad international support for holding the conference. In 2001, on the other hand, after the outbreak of the second intifada, such a conference was held. Israel and the United States boycotted it.
Recently Swiss diplomats said their country, as the convention’s sponsor, couldn’t decide by itself on calling the conference again. So Switzerland began consultations with the other signatory states to see if enough of them were interested in holding the conference.
Switzerland distributed to all the signatories a proposal to hold the conference in Geneva in mid-December. The Swiss made it clear they wanted the event to focus on the upholding of international humanitarian law.
The Swiss proposal is for a three-hour conference at an ambassadorial level, with few speeches and no media coverage except for a statement to the press to be released at the end.
“We made it clear we didn’t want a political event or debate club, or a conference that would blame or criticize one of the sides,” a Swiss diplomat said.
Israel objected to the move strongly despite the low profile Switzerland suggested. Senior Israeli diplomats went to Bern and Geneva a few times in a bid to persuade the Swiss Foreign Ministry not to hold the conference, saying Israel would boycott it if it were held.
“They told us that holding the conference would help a one-sided Palestinian move intended to make Israel look bad and attack it in an international forum,” the Swiss diplomat said.
Updated draft refers to settlements
The conference cannot make binding decisions, but could increase international criticism of Israel’s policy in the territories, especially regarding the settlements.
The Israeli fear over the conference increased after Jerusalem received an updated draft of its proposed contents. Unlike previous versions, the updated draft was phrased in a very political way, mentioning Israel by name and referring in detail to issues like the West Bank settlements.
Israeli and Swiss diplomats said the United States, Canada and Australia were helping Israel and exerting pressure on Switzerland and other states to thwart the conference. Israeli diplomats said that despite the fact that the Americans have yet to make a formal decision on the matter, U.S. officials have told Switzerland they would boycott the conference if it is held. Canada has conveyed a similar message to Switzerland.
Speaking with Haaretz on Wednesday, Edgar Vasquez, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, affirmed the American disapproval. “We strongly oppose the convening of the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions and have made our opposition unmistakably clear,” he said.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman held telephone conversations in the last few days with colleagues worldwide, asking them to object to the conference and declare they would boycott it if it is held. Also, Israeli ambassadors in several key Western states have been instructed to try to obtain a commitment from those states to boycott the conference.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, along with the group of Arab nations, are pushing for the summit to be held.
But the Israeli efforts look bound to fail. Israeli and Swiss diplomats estimate that the Swiss government will in the coming days announce the holding of the summit.
Western diplomats knowledgeable of the proceedings described the Swiss as determined to move forward despite the significant resistance by nations such as the U.S., Canada, Australia and others.
The Fourth Geneva Convention is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions, adopted in 1949, which deals with the protection of civilian populations residing in areas of armed conflict and in areas under military occupation. The treaty forbids harming any agents uninvolved in the fighting – which includes, in addition to civilians, captured and wounded soldiers.
In regarding to a state of protracted military occupation – such as exists in the West Bank – the treaty decrees that the occupying power must uphold the human rights of the occupied civilian population, and ensure its conditions of living. The treaty also forbids any and all movement of civilian population from within the borders of the occupying power into the areas under military rule – such as the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. [This is not true. It may be how the international community has interpreted it but it is not what was intended when passed and not what it says. Also the treaty only applies to the occupation of land of a High Contracting Party which these lands are not. The international community wants to ignore this. Ted Belman]
Israel is a party to the convention, but the Knesset has never legislated the treaty into Israeli law. Israel claims the treaty is not applicable to the West Bank or East Jerusalem, for it considers these areas to be “disputed,” and not as under occupation. Thus, Israel does not regard the settlements as violations to the treaty.
dweller Said:
Snitch or crybaby !!!!!! Buck-up, boy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ Ted Belman:
@ yamit82:
Yamit is far too modest. He provides only a SELECTED part of the post he cites [#21]. Here is the post in its entirety:
@ yamit82:
@ mar55:
Only ‘most’? — Why read any of it at all?
(How would you know what part to read or NOT read until it was already read?)
Thanks for your professional opinion.
@ bernard ross:
(Mr Ross conveniently leaves out the CONTEXT for the following comment. So I have obligingly restored it:)
I stand by that, foursquare.
From “who knows where”? It comes from COMMON SENSE — a commodity so-designated because it is NOT dependent on specialized learning or other narrow endeavor. However, that commodity is apparently not so ‘common’ in some circles. . . . And as to who ‘needs’ it, well obviously the party whose remark (2nd blockquote, above) PROMPTED it.
That’s the uncluttered truth.
There is a REASON that psychology is understood to NOT be an exact science — like physics, botany, or genetics. It deals only in symptoms — not causes. (And it often gets even the symptoms wrong.)
— So its remedies are never solutions, but (at best) only stopgaps and copings. It’s perfectly proper to say there is no science in psych. The overwhelming majority of shrinks are overeducated imbeciles who need to have their OWN heads examined.
Don’t need a Bible to know that the best ideas come from the workings of the intuition, and manifest as common sense.
But then, one would have to HAVE a measure of common sense to see that
— and that lets YOU out, now doesn’t it.
I know my way around books & “studies.” But unlike many — who’ve been educated out of all the common sense they were ever born with — I’ve never let bookwork keep me from paying attention to Objective Reality.
They are neither ‘religious’ NOR ‘psychobabble’ — and if you don’t want to ‘hear’ them, you have any easy remedy at hand
— skip my posts.
‘Rational’??? ROTFLSHMSFOAIDMT!
“Religious sermons”??? Your tag-teammate, Yamit, seems not to have gotten your bulletin. You should be taking THAT up not with Ted, but with him. NOBODY around here pulls out the scripture more than he. “Sermons,” indeed.
@ Ted Belman:
Thank you for watching the individual in question. Now we will get more insults from him while he goes on and on and on until I also stopped reading most of what he said. He needs professional help.
@ Ted Belman:
Ted, as an attorney what do you think of my comment regarding Jus cogens in the 1969 Vienna conventions. I have encountered the Jus cogens argument as an attack on rights derived from LON, etc.
bernard ross Said:
@ Ted Belman:
Dweller Said:
…….
Ted Belman Said:
I think Dweller is the most arrogant poster on the site but his arrogance is usually more pronounced when putting forward his unsupported psychobabble like a preacher in an evangelist tent. when he sticks to the subject, with citations etc then he tends not to be so arrogant and his posts have more value.
Ted Belman Said:
Dweller often discredits the messenger either directly with name calling or with psychobabble analysis of their motives.
This psychobabble is often insulting, abusive and intrusive when directed to the poster as a smear of his motives.
But the psychobabble is more than that: even when he does not employ it to smear a poster is is abusive and intrusive in the same manner as would be to read someone preaching their religion on the site. this is dwellers religion and he posts it without any basis, reasoning or support just like when someone evangelizes. He says his psychobabble is not based in science nor psychology nor on any studies but if we had common sense we would see he is right and that since we cant prove he is wrong then he must be right, just like a religious preacher. Here is just the latest example but they arrive in the thousands.
Dweller Said:
Who needs this preaching that comes from who knows where:
dweller Said:
.
He might as well preach right from his bible, but who wants to hear his religious and psychobabble ideas that have nothing to do with the subject? We discuss things here on the basis of rational thought not on claims of revelations from G_D. This is not a platform for religious sermons.
@ yamit82:I must admit that I hardly ever read Dweller’s comments. Too long , defensive and picayune for me. You called him some names which I thought crossed over the line from civility. If he also crosses the line, then I shouldn’t have singled you out. I have many times asked you both to ignore each other. Wishful thinking on my part.
Mar55 and Honeybee, I respect you both for coming to Yamit’s defense, not that he needs anyone’s help.
I will have to watch Dweller more closely.
mar55 Said:
Thank you!!!!
honeybee Said:
Me subestimas
yamit82 Said:
Las dos, easy peasy
honeybee Said:
Peacan pie my favorite
My kingdom for such a pie and of course the pie maker. 🙂
honeybee Said:
🙁 🙂 😛
mar55 Said:
A wise and beautiful woman, who also bake a wonderful pecan pie.
mar55 Said:
Casi si Casi no !!!!!!!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE2VJq3jkxc
@ honeybee:
Who is Deborah? your grandmother? I think Deborah dicha’s are funny and true.
At least yami82 has something to be arrogant about.
Arrogance is no problem when someone has something to be arrogant about it.
If dweller is the only one who can insult and get away with it
then it might be wise to look into visiting other shores.
honeybee Said:
honeybee Said:
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
yamit82 Said:
Dicha of Deborah: ” Arrogance like greed is good”.
@ Ted Belman:
Pls explain in dwellers case how to separate his ideas from dweller himself as all or most of hisideas are his opinions stated as fact to which he claims to stand by even against supportive data that contradicts his unsupported nonfactual opinions.
If you think I am arrogant by singly accusing me of being arrogant you are saying that dweller is not and that he does not attack me and many other commenters.
You may be correct about me but you are also being unjustly selective too. Either you don’t read his comments or you choose to ignore them.
dweller Said:
One example of many. I only replied to this.
@ Ted Belman:
This guy does not need this forum. He needs professional help.
A shrink would be more adequate. It is not his ideas but the way he exposes it. Then he is just as guilty of insulting honeybee, yamit82 and even me in the past. Reason why I stay away of any topic where he is opining.
Feeling sorry for him does not help. More than a bad boy he is SICK.
@ Ted Belman:
Dweller is a bad boy too, and I think dweller can defend himself perfectly well.
Yamit. Take this as a warning. Stop putting Dweller down and attacking him personally. Don’t discredit the messenger, only his ideas. I for one am put off by your arrogance.
@ yamit82:
I don’t project (told you, I don’t need to). Try again, shlemiel.
And it’s not about ‘deflecting’ anything; it’s a simple, rational observation.
You’ve made the accusation fifty times or more on this blog. It’s clear that you’ve got a thing about it. Hard to ignore.
Now, THAT’s clear-cut projection and psychobabble to boot. . . .
Yeah, ok; you found me out — it was because I giggled when you kissed me, right?
Yes, your ‘enjoyment’ is quite noticeable. . . .
Unlike yourself, of course.
Always happy to return a bonehead’s bones to him after I’ve stripped them of meat.
dweller Said:
Art 71 should also be looked into as I have encountered the Jus cogens argument of peremptory norms.
yamit82 Said:
Projecting with a puerile attempt to defect my accusations against myself. Won’t work you display all the classic symptoms and tells. You are so conflicted between your stupid religious beliefs and your homo inclinations. Drives you nuts and you can’t reconcile the two.
Whether my brain is dead or empty is irrelevant to the fact that you are as queer and phony as a women’s new boob job.
Really enjoy your ad nausea attempts at rejoinders to BR and myself…. You do go on and on and on and on …..
Fetch Fido Fetch!!!!!!!!!!!
@ yamit82:
“Empty”? — who said ’empty’?
I asked if it was dead.
Empty would be a blessing, bli ayin hara.
— Empty would mean available for filling, as distinguished from closed to Reality.
But you STILL haven’t answered my [above] question:
WHAT [among the things in the previous discussion] are you characterizing as ‘dead’?
I think you’re actually BOTH. (You protest the matter a little too much. . . .) And you won’t get free of either of those two conditions by trying to lay them on somebody else. Doesn’t work like that.
@ yamit82:
What I know didn’t come from ‘memorizing’ anything — but it has fortified me in a way that isn’t shakable.
Mastery of nuts-n-bolts data come from proximity to them; I don’t live there. But that kind of info isn’t hard to come by, and it doesn’t change what I said.
Define that, please. (Since you volunteered the term, you should have no trouble telling us all what it consists of.)
dweller Said:
Informing don’t do much good look at yourself. You are like a highschool kid memorizing events and dates but ingnorant about the nuts and bolts of Israel you see us from a fundamentalist christian pov not a Jewish one.
@ yamit82:
How so?
@ yamit82:
What‘s ‘dead’?
The Acquired Rights Doctrine?
FGC?
Your cranial cavity?
yamit82 Said:
I would like you to elucidate who will rally around the Mount. One would expect the religious sector to be the main unifying force regarding religious issues such as the Mount and yet the Haredi have rejected this. So who do you rely on to rally around the Mount: not the haredi, not the secular, Who?
As for jerusalem, it is a separate issue from the Mount.
yamit82 Said:
What task is that?
dweller Said:
It’s Dead!!!! Move on!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yXqU-w9U0
@ yamit82:
There’s a lot of informing that could be done with a carefully concerted campaign of PR around the IDEA of a tribunal without actually submitting to one.
Like diplomacy & like hasbara, military might is NECESSARY
— but, of itself, NOT SUFFICIENT.
Each needs the others, and — in turn — buttresses & contributes TO them.
@ Ted Belman:
Thank you. I believe I DO understand the issue, but I’d be concerned that the agenda not be left as structured.
The proper ruling document here is not FGC, but the Pal. Mandate Charter and its antecedents — and every time GOI agrees to discuss Israel-FGC matters (or declines to obstreperously protest such proposed talks) without insistently addressing AS WELL the broader historical legal context, the Mandate is permitted to fade increasingly further into obscurity and ‘irrelevance.’
GOI should — LOUDLY, REPEATEDLY, AND CONSISTENTLY — invoke the Acquired Rights Doctrine [1969 Vienna Convention on Treaties, Art 70 (b)] and insist that the the “world community” either honor that doctrine in re the Mandate Charter — or take their summit and stuff it.
The High Contracting Parties to the FGC may well thumb their noses at the proposition of structuring their proceedings around that — but the attendant publicity and lasting hasbara could help put a lot of Jews WORLDWIDE in mind of realities to which they’d heretofore been oblivious.
It could stiffen some SPINES in all sorts of forgotten quarters. . . .
@ bernard ross:
It’s always-relevant either negatively or positively.
If you want to unify Jews only rallying round the Temple mount and Jerusalem has the potential power for that unity and when I say unity it will still be less than 50% of all Jews but it’s enough.
There are already sufficient numbers of jews for the task in Y&S!!!
yamit82 Said:
this approach also depends on the settlement of Jews in YS. therefore, the settlement of Jews in YS should be the prime focus and it also has the least legal problem if the Jews are not israeli.
yamit82 Said:
The problem is that Israel is not interested in using its power to advance sovereignty or jewish settlement in YS…therefore that power is irrelevant.
yamit82 Said:
I dont beleive her case was considered iron clad, please explain. also, I dont remember taba being related to the basic issues arising from the LON mandate of Jewish settlement, so I dont see an analagy except you beleive that Israel cannot win any legal case. Even such a scenario should not preclude diplomatic and legal action in various national venues that do not include the global influences(e.g. USA,Israel, etc.) does it take a talmud scholar to determine the value of calling in ambassadors and demanding they adhere to agreements and cease libeleing jewish settlement. The foreigners libel Israel because they cannot say the same of jewish settlement. The fact that Israel doenst use this to advantage shows a lack of imagination. Liberman appears to now be getting around to evaluating paying them to leave while we discussed it here for years. I think bennett would make a better FM. Liberman appears to have no legal or diplomatic sense.
yamit82 Said:
you keep saying this but facts demonstrate differently…Israel won every conflict with them but cannot still settle Jews in YS. Israel has defacto given it away.
as for the SC ruling on occupation of the west bank: it is Israel who states that it occupies the west bank and that fact is demonstrated by the fact of no annexation unlike golan and Jerusalem. therefore, a court must decide what law applies: if Israel says the land does not belong to Israel then legally it must be in occupation.
yamit82 Said:
the problem is not about an international tribunal but about whether Israel declares that settlement is legal and legitimate in terms of its own laws. the internationals merely follow Israels own behavior. Israel has declared itself in occupation and therefore laws of occupation apply. You seem to be unable to see the vast gulf between Israels total lack of involvement in settlement and sovereignty and the bringing of a case before an international tribunal. There is a whole range of legal and diplomatic action in between those positions, the first of which should be GOI action in Israel. You keep avoiding the same issue, talking about international tribunals when Israel is the problem. If the battle cannot be won in Israel then it cannot be won in the world.
@ dweller:
Irrelevant the supreme court ruled on the legality and sided with the government.
The danger none of your arm chair genuises never consider is that the Arabs have a side and any internatioal trubunal will be biased against Israel if such cases were ever to come before such an international tribunal and we lose then all the settlement will be illegal in fact.
Israel thought she had an iron clad case with Taba and lost.
In the end only the relative Power equilibrium will be the final determinant…. That’s how it has always been. Might does determine right in international and geopolitical relations.
This is a way out
Part 2
There is more you need to read all in sequence
yamit82 Said:
that would be nice but Israel will not annex even the whole of C, perhaps not even E1.
yamit82 Said:
this might be so if Israel brought cases but Israel doesn’t bring cases now and would also likely not then either, it thinks lawfare is a waste of time.
@ dweller:You certainly understand the issue and you are right.
NO. The Convention forbids FORCED movement from the possessing [‘occupying’] power (i.e., transfer) into the areas under military rule — and FORCED movement of the existing population out of those areas (i.e., deportation).
The mere, self-motivated, non-obligatory comings & goings of persons to and from the ‘occupied’ lands did not fall under the purview of FGC — which had been created expressly to address the abuses & outrages of FORCED deportation & transfer as perpetrated by the Third Reich in the then-recent war.
In fact, one could argue that the 2005 Israeli FORCED banishment of Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria constituted a violation of the Convention. . . .
Ted, do you know whether anyone has tried to determine how many arab inhabitants of Judea and Samaria were “illegally transferred” from Jordan during their illegal occupation?
How can the Muslim world put pressure on Helvetica? Must be the trillion of petro$ in the underground Helvetica banks.
yamit82 Said:
U must be joking! UNRWA was created and supported by the West to destroy Israel. But it is not working and even if they get their “land”, they won’t be satisfied and will continue to get Western money because they won’t survive without it.
They belong to the Arab/Muslim nation and have NO interest in a Pal. state.
@ bernard ross:
A- If America really wanted to pressure the Swiss and EU she has the leverage to do so. That the leverage is not being applied indicates that the Administration is supporting the Euro and the Palis but don’t want to be publicly seen as in the enemy camp if not actually leading it.
B-Let them have their state in the borders they now control we annex what we control as well doesn’t matter if nobody recognizes it. Hamas in Gaza precludes the possibility that Israel can accommodate to them and any recognition.
C- Once they are a State UNRWA ceases they have no mandate because the so called refugees will no longer be refugees but citizens of a Palis state. Arab states will also drop them financially. That leaves primarily USA and Europe.
As a recognized state they will be held responsible for aggression against Israel just as any other nation state attacking Israel with all that implies.
D- since the economy of both Gaza and West Bank Palis is almost 100% dependent on Israel even the currency they use are Shekels, we should continue to suppply them but add a surcharge for everything the purchase from Israel or import through Israel
It could be 5% 10% 20% etc. The extra surcharge to go into a fund to pay Arabs to leave over time.
More and more its looking like its best even to pay Bibi’s “peace partners” to get out and stay out of Israel. Even the sound of it “a muslim free Holy Land” is rather enticing, especially so when they exit of their own volition.
If Israel facilitated immigration direct from the diaspora to YS then this clause would not even have to be argued about. I suggest free land grants to masses of diaspora jews in YS as an affirmative action project to mitigate the past damage to the settlement rights of world Jewry in YS resulting from the obstruction of the UK, Jordan and Israel.
Switzerland should be pressured to include in their conference the transfer of jews from arab countries after the advent of the Genva conventions. Otherwise, they are making a double standard.