What is the history behind Israels occupation of Palestine ?
Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, pertaining to conduct in warfare, states that “territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army”. The regulations state that occupation is only permitted to be provisional, temporary control and is only meant to last while armed conflict lasts.
International law, including the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Convention, which pertains to conduct during armed conflict and protects civilians not taking part in hostilities, sets out provisions that protect the rights of those living under occupation.
Under international law, an occupying power is supposed to introduce as few changes as possible and not alter the status quo of the territory from before it was occupied. The occupier is also supposed to adhere to regulations including the protection of occupied peoples’ property and allowing the flow of humanitarian aid.
An occupying power should not move its own people into the territory it is occupying, under international law, and is considered a war crime.
Israel has been criticised on many occasions for failing to adhere to these principles during its occupation of the Palestinian territories. Over the decades, for example, more and more illegal settlements have been built and there are now around 750,000 Israeli settlers living on Palestinian land.
Palestinians who are arrested and charged with crimes in the West Bank are tried in military courts, rather than civil ones. There are also many thousands of Palestinian prisoners being held in detention without charge.
Furthermore, international humanitarian agencies say Israel has prevented humanitarian aid trucks from reaching parts of Gaza.
Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem after it started the Six-Day War in 1967. These regions were formerly under Jordanian control.
Israel made its annexation of East Jerusalem official when it passed the Jerusalem Law in 1980, stating that East and West Jerusalem combined were the capital of Israel.
Despite several peace efforts such as the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2000 Camp David negotiations since then, Israel has not withdrawn from the West Bank. The Oslo Accords resulted in the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was supposed to be temporary. The West Bank was divided into Areas A, B and C in 1995, denoting how much control the PA has in each. A final agreement, which was supposed to be reached five years later, never came into existence.
Israel occupied Gaza, which had been under the control of Egypt, in 1967.
However, in 2005, according to Israel, it withdrew from Gaza under then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan, pulling out 9,000 Israeli settlers, when the situation there became too tense.
Israel and its supporters, therefore, claim it was no longer occupying Gaza.
However, the Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007, which is why the UN, Amnesty International and other aid organisations and think-tanks still refer to Gaza as an occupied territory.
The ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July concluded that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal.
The International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 found that Israel was in breach of Article 3 of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, including "racial segregation and apartheid ".
Many commentators have used the word apartheid in connection with Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The word literally means “apartness” in Afrikaans – a policy of separation. Apartheid was implemented against Black residents of South Africa from the 1940s until its abolition in the early 1990s.
According to the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court and the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, apartheid consists of three main elements.
- An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another.
- A context of systematic oppression by one racial group over another.
- Inhumane acts.
Among those who describe the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as apartheid are Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. When Amnesty issued a report in 2022, its secretary general, Agnes Callamard, stated:
“Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights.”
The report found that policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all the territories under its control “clearly amount to apartheid”.
Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories face at least 65 discriminatory laws, according to Adalah, a human rights law group in Israel.
Under occupation, the West Bank is rife with military checkpoints and patrols. Movement by Palestinian residents is severely restricted under Israel’s permit regime in the West Bank and for movement in and out of Gaza. Under this system, Palestinians are required to obtain permits to move between the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. These permits can be extremely difficult to obtain. Palestinians are often subjected to violence and theft from illegal settlers with little or no recourse to justice.
Military raids, roadblocks, violence by settlers and curfews have become much more severe since October 7, and Palestinians are living under curfews – often shot at by armed settlers who are supported by Israeli forces if they leave their homes or even move too close to their windows.
Israeli forces regularly destroy infrastructure including private property in the West Bank. Typically, the reasons given for this include the owner not having the correct permits – which are often nearly impossible to obtain – to own the property.
Between 2009 and February this year, Israeli authorities demolished 10,472 Palestinian-owned structures in the West Bank, displacing 15,825 Palestinians, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Illegal Israeli settlers have also been causing the displacement of Palestinians, by taking over land and farmland in the West Bank and destroying Palestinian property, for decades.
On the first day of the ICJ hearings, legal representative Reichler argued that Israel’s goal is to permanently acquire Palestinian territory, which is why forces and settlers violently expel Palestinian citizens from their homes.
While the Israeli government officially stopped building new settlements in the West Bank after signing the Oslo Accords in 1993, the settlements continued to expand. In 2021, the government started building settlements again.
Now, the Israeli government actively enables settlements by providing settlers with financial incentives to move into Palestinian territory, including lower costs of living. The government itself has built and funded houses for settlements in the West Bank.
The number of Israeli settlers living in Palestinian territory has dramatically increased over the past few years. As of February 11 this year, the number of settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, stands at 517,407, up from 502,991 a year earlier.
The Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans an occupying power from transferring its own population to the area it occupies. Settlements also exist in East Jerusalem, where some 350,000 Palestinians live.
In 2002, Israel constructed a 708km (440 mile)-long separation wall (also known in Arabic as “the apartheid wall”) through the West Bank.
Only around 15 percent of the wall follows the 1967 Green Line, the demarcation line between Israel and the West Bank as stated in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its neighbours – Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria – following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The rest (85 percent of the wall) encroaches into Palestinian territory.
In 2004, the ICJ made a nonbinding ruling that the construction of this wall was in violation of international law. It called for its dismantling and ordered Israel to pay reparations for any damage caused by its construction. Two decades after that ruling, however, the wall still stands, slicing up Palestinian communities and cutting residents off from their lands, critical infrastructure and services.
Israel’s violation of the ruling demonstrated that it considers itself above international law and was unafraid to show this to the global community.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem at the end of the 1967 war. It made its annexation of East Jerusalem official when it passed the Jerusalem Law in 1980, saying that East and West Jerusalem combined were the capital of Israel.
In 1980, however, the UN Security Council (UNSC) ruled the Jerusalem Law “null and void” in UNSC Resolution 478.
Most of the international community still considers East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be Palestinian territory illegally occupied by Isreal. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of any future Palestinian state.
No major country in the world recognises unified Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, with the exception of the US. On December 6, 2017, former US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital and moved the US embassy there. While a majority of countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo and Papua New Guinea also have their embassies in West Jerusalem.
Russia recognises West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and East Jerusalem as “the capital of the future Palestinian state”. In 2022, Australia reversed its recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Israel also unilaterally annexed the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981, a move recognised in 2019 by the US, the only country in the world to do so.
In 1988, the UN General Assembly recognised Palestine’s declaration of independence. In 2012, the UNGA passed a resolution granting Palestine “non-member observer state” status, effectively acknowledging it as a sovereign state.
The United Nations has 193 member states. As of June 2024, the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 145 of the 193 member states of the United Nations, or just over 75% of all UN members.