11 Fall 2023 srael has a good record of complying with international law. However, there are rules that seem to have been tailor-made and applied only to Israel, some of which I would like to highlight here. A legitimate preliminary question, however, could be whether international law is at all relevant in a situation in which Israel faces an opponent such as Hamas, a murderous terrorist group that ignores every legal norm, as demonstrated by its attack on Israel's sovereign territory on October 7, 2023. Hamas carried out heinous acts of murder and torture against thousands of peaceful citizens. Hamas takes hundreds of innocent persons hostage and murders babies and children by slitting their throats. Under international law, the perpetrators of such crimes are international criminals who can be tried by courts of every country in the world. Despite the behavior of Hamas, international law remains relevant for Israel. Israel is a democratic, lawbased society where customary international law is part of the fabric of the Israeli legal system and is enforced by impartial courts. Moreover, international law is p olitically relevant since legitimacy gives political power. As a tiny state dependent on trade and relations with other states, Israel has a problem the moment something is branded as illegitimate under international law. Our Arab opponents are perfectly aware of this, and that is why they exert tremendous effort to brand Israel's activities as illegal under international law. To do so, they warp international law and propose laws that are only a pplicable to Israel. I will present here nine examples of rules that have either been warped or entirely invented, solely regarding Israel. The first issue is the nature of UN resolutions. There is a claim that UN General Assembly resolutions create international law, but this is not so. No state a ccepts a UN General Assembly resolution as binding, except with regard to Israel. You may have heard that “Israel is violating UN resolutions.” This is nonsense. UN resolutions are political statements, and do not create international law. In fact, the d rafters of the UN Charter very carefully refrained from granting any UN body the right to create international law. International law is created by state actions, not by the UN. Nevertheless, we still hear, “Aha, they violated UN resolutions,” but only with regard to Israel. The second issue is the nature of armistice demarcation lines. When a state signs an armistice agreement it includes the definition of what is called an “armistice demarcation line.” Such a line marks the boundary from beyond which troops should not move. In 1949, Israel signed armistice agreements with all its Arab neighbors. These agreements contained definitions of the armistice demarcation lines. There is a clause in all the agreements, inserted at the demand of the Arab states, that the lines are temporary, and not permanent boundaries. The temporary armistice demarcation line between Israel and Jordan (commonly referred to as the “Green Line” because the line was created on a map using a green crayon), is the line that demarcated what is currently referred to as Judea and Samaria or the “West Bank.” Yet, somehow, the application of tailor-made “international law” rendered the Green Line into a permanent boundary. A temporary armistice demarcation line magically became an established political boundary – magic that only seems to apply to Israel. The third issue is military occupation. It is not a pleasant phenomenon, but it is an inextricable aspect of the laws of war that apply when a state occupies the sovereign territory of an enemy state. Whether Israel is in fact occupying the territory of a foreign state in Judea and Samaria is a moot point. Israel's position is that Judea and Samaria do not constitute the territory of a foreign state. The territory was not legally Jordanian, and Jordan subsequently renounced any claim to the territory after the 1967 war. It may be slated as the location of a future Palestinian state, but at present, this is certainly not the case. It is not occupied territory; it is disputed territory. In fact, Israel did something for which I do not believe it has received credit. The Palestinian population in the West Bank is not comprised of Israeli citizens, and there International Law Tailor-Made for Israel* I Robbie Sabel * This edited paper is based on a webinar of the UKFLI Charitable Trust. The original video can be v iewed at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq1beJrGGEc&t=1593s Appreciation is expressed to Dr. Ira Hammerman, who assisted with editing the transcript.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgzNzA=