An American Investigative Reporter

The Agreements Legitimize Israeli Violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention

By Frank Collins

Many Palestinian critics of the Oslo and Cairo agreements charge that, aside from providing them superficial prerogatives of a state such as issuing postal stamps, the agreements will continue the Israeli occupation and its repressions in full force. These critics contend that the only thing really new about the agreements is that they have delegated responsibility to the Palestinians for the policing of their own occupation.

Joining these Palestinian critics is Israeli Meron Benvenisti, the father of the authoritative West Bank Data Base. In an article in Ha'aretz (May 12, 1994), Benvenisti says, "the agreement can be regarded as comparable to the British never leaving Palestine and to the inhabitants of Palestine legitimizing the continuing British rule by their signature of consent." Benvenisti charges that the terms of the Cairo agreements are not new but instead are precisely the proposals drafted by Ariel Sharon and offered to the Egyptians in the negotiations following the Camp David agreement. The Israeli proposals were rejected by the Egyptians. At the time, the PLO refused even to participate in the negotiations, charging that they were a complete sell-out.

Critics now charge that these Sharon proposals, resurrected and refurbished in the form of the duly signed Oslo-Cairo agreements, are to all intents and purposes binding treaties that spell out and reimpose all the onerous conditions of the military occupation.

It is true that they do provide for limited Palestinian self-government, but only under the complete control of the military authorities. The 2,000 military orders that were designed during the occupation to govern the Palestinians remain fully in force in the "autonomy" areas. This was made perfectly clear by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who is also minister of defense, at the end of May when he quickly countermanded Yasser Arafat's gesture of abolishing those Israeli regulations leaving the Gaza Strip under Egyptian laws and Jericho under the Jordanian laws in force prior to their seizure by Israel in 1967.

The Israeli military orders, specifically reconfirmed in the Cairo agreements, provide for the movementand action of the Israeli troops at will in all of the occupied territories including Gaza and Jericho. Basic to the military orders and the Oslo-Cairo agreements is the provision for the maintenance of military security zones anywhere and at any time at the option of the Israeli occupation authorities. Military zones surrounding the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip are an essential part of the Cairo agreements.

The standing military orders provide Israeli forces authority to arrest any Palestinian anywhere without charges. Thus, under the agreements the Palestinians can do nothing to stop the Israeli undercover death squads which summarily executed six Palestinians in Jabalya in the Gaza Strip in March of this year, and two Palestinians, one from Gaza, in Jerusalem on May 31.

The agreements that now apply to the Gaza Strip and Jericho, and are likely to be extended to the remainder of the West Bank outside of East Jerusalem as Israeli forces withdraw, provide legal cover for the illegal Jewish settlements by taking official cognizance of the settlements in the Gaza Strip. These settlements are separated from the "autonomy" areas patrolled by Palestinians by security zones from which Palestinians are barred. Thus borders are created, as if between separate countries. Added to this, Israeli law has been extended to the settlements, replacing the local law of the territories. This may be regarded as de facto annexation of the settlement areas to Israel.

It is true that these provisions of the agreements only extend the existing status quo. But never before has the PLOsanctioned these violations of international law, as it did by signing the Oslo-Cairo agreements in the name of the Palestinian people.

There is no question that the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are illegal under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention clearly states: "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies."

All countries, except Israel, have accepted the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the illegality of the Jewish settlements in these territories. That the settlements are illegal remains established U.S. policy, even though explicit statements of it have been muted in the years of the Reagan and Clinton administrations.

The Oslo and Cairo agreements themselves may be violations of international law. They fall into the category of agreements concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the occupying power, Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention:

Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any changes introduced as the result of the occupation of a territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory.

There can be no question that Article 47 means what it says. The only question is whether it applies to the Oslo and Cairo agreements in the course of an occupation scheduled to continue for at least five years. A verdict on this question from the World Court or other qualified international body would be difficult to obtain, however, in view of the strong support being given to the Oslo-Cairo agreements by the United States, Israel and the PLO.

Because Articles 47 and 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention concern only the protection of civilians under military occupation, these articles are inapplicable to shaping the final peace treaty ending an occupation. However, the danger of the interim Oslo-Cairo agreements is that, if left unchallenged on the grounds of their violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, these arrangements will provide a strangulating precedent for the terms of the final peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.

Frank Collins is a regular contributor to the Washington Report.