re: the ICC and "the crime of occupation":
"Occupation" means the military control by one State of another State's territory. This is not a crime, according to the ICC, or for any other international treaty or organization.
Ethnic cleansing, however, is a crime, for the ICC, and the Geneva conventions, and the Hague Conventions. The ICC doesn't define this, any differently than those earlier treaties (which the U.S. has signed long ago). You are equating "occupation" with "ethnic cleansing".
You said: <By this definition, building a garrison in disputed territory can be defined as a war crime, if anyone wishes to define it so.>
No, Nadine.
The relevant sections Israel has to be worried about are:
(viii) The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory; (Jacob: If the garrison is soldiers, not civilians, it isn't a war crime.)
"Deportation or forcible transfer of population" means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law; (Jacob: So, for instance, erecting a Wall that encloses a Palestinian town, and then denying that town access to their water and cropland, and creating conditions of 60% unemployment, this would count as a war crime. Can you name any other nation, other than Israel, that does this?)
"The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime; (Jacob: the Israeli marriage laws, and many other Israeli laws and practices, are an expression of apartheid, and are a war crime. Can you name any other nation that has racist marriage laws equivalent to Israel's?) |
