Israel told to consider Geneva pact on Pals land; boycott urged

By: Ahmed Hammadi

HELD JERUSALEM: Israel's top law officer has recommended that the government should consider applying the Fourth Geneva Convention to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a move which would implicitly acknowledge the occupation in the Palestinian territories.

A report compiled by a justice ministry team, overseen by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, said that the government should “thoroughly examine” the possibility of applying the protocol which governs the treatment of civilians in occupied land.

The report was commissioned in the wake of a non-binding ruling in July by the UN's highest legal body - the International Court of Justice - against the legality of Israel's West Bank separation barrier.

The court also accepted that the Geneva Convention does apply to the West Bank and Gaza and that the barrier breached the convention. This has been the general position of the international community, as affirmed in repeated UN Security Council resolutions.

Israel's position until now has been that the Geneva Convention does not apply to the territories it occupied in 1967 because there was no sovereign power there before their capture.

Before the Six Day War of 1967, Gaza was under Egyptian military control while the West Bank was annexed by Jordan, a move not widely recognized.

In the first political reaction to the recommendation, Yuval Steinitz, the chairman of the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee and a member of the ruling Likud party, criticized the proposal and questioned the attorney general's competence to make it.

A legal adviser to the Palestinian Authority Michael Tarazi welcomed as a “positive development” the Israeli attorney general's recommendation.

In another development, an Egyptian governmental newspaper Al-Akhbar on Tuesday called on Arab countries to boycott Israel in order to isolate it in the international arena.

The daily’s Editor-in Cheif Galal Dowidar wrote in Tuesday's editorial that there was an opportunity to boycott Israel following the decision made by foreign ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement last week to ban visits by settlers.

Al-Akhbar is one of the three Egyptian main governmental daily newspapers, which usually reflects the Egyptian government's opinions.

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