Professor Robbie Sabel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has an interesting article up at the JCPA website entitled “Manipulating International Law as Part of Anti-Israeli “Lawfare””. The article touches on several issues which have been the subject of readers’ complaints to the BBC.
“Since the 2005 Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, there has been no Israeli control of the Gaza area. The area is administered by Hamas. There is no Israeli military government in Gaza. The laws in Gaza, both criminal and civilian, are Hamas laws. Hamas controls the economy, the taxes, the courts, the police, and the prisons. It has its own, heavily armed, militias. The Hamas government palpably was not appointed by Israel and is not subservient to Israel. By any accepted legal standard, Gaza is not under Israeli occupation. Israel maintains a blockade in an attempt to prevent arms shipments from entering Gaza; this, however, does not constitute “occupation.” Furthermore, Gaza has a land border with Egypt, over which Israel has no control whatsoever.”
Professor Sabel also relates to issues which repeatedly compromise the BBC’s reputation for accuracy, including that of the so-called ‘1967 borders’.
“The 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement states that the Green Line is an Armistice Demarcation Line, and that it should not be “interpreted as prejudicing, in any sense, an ultimate political settlement between the Parties.” The Armistice Agreement then continues explicitly to determine that: “The Armistice Demarcation Lines…are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either party relating thereto.” Neither Israel nor Jordan ever designated the Green Line as their international border. Before 1967, Jordan and other Arab states refrained from recognizing the Green Line as a border because of their reluctance to accept the legitimacy of Israel even within the Green Line.”
Read the whole article here.
Related posts: Professor Robbie Sabel on “sui generis”.