-
-
- Resume builders: Be a broken record on Iran, cheer authoritarians … 1
- UN Committee: Israeli system ‘tantamount to apartheid’ 0
- Slater on Beinart 0
- And we live on… 0
- US official — we went to Israel first 3
- Israel lobby’s favorite senator tries to erase Palestinian refugee status … 23
- Israel takes 30 dunams of land near Salfit ‘for security … 4
- Aaron David Miller: After a short ‘peace process,’ look … 38
-
- BDS victory: South Africa strips Ahava’s ‘made in Israel’ label 713
- Video: Israeli mob demands all African refugees be deported from … 475
- Day after pogroms, Likud MK calls for internment camp for … 427
- Neverending Nakba: Israel breaks lull, attacks Gazan farmers 413
- ‘This is not fair play’: Mahmoud Sarsak’s family demands his … 389
- March of the Flags 345
- Neocons in Washington Post: Military strike on Iran would ‘calm … 323
- Nabi Saleh’s Bassem Tamimi convicted by Israeli courts based on … 293
-
- The Messiah’s Donkey: Settlers fire on Palestinian villagers as the … 235
- Aharon Appelfeld’s rage at the German language (and Arendt’s need … 156
- US to differentiate between ‘personally displaced’ Palestinian refugees and their … 129
- March of the Flags 127
- Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism 110
- Feeling the hate in Long Island 97
- Israeli judge to issue verdict in Rachel Corrie case 94
- WaPo’s Walter Pincus says US is ‘going above and beyond … 87
-
Recent Comments
click link to see last 100 comments- Resume builders: Be a broken record on Iran, cheer authoritarians in Gulf (1)
- Annie Robbins: Having recognized its weakness, the US knows that it will be the UN that takes the lead in Syria and...
- Did Israeli Eurovision contestant watch too much Juliano Mer Khamis? (54)
- Annie Robbins: GL, urban dictionary has PEP, just no explanation of progressive except for palestine....
- German Lefty: Annie, it looks like you got infected with the Eurovision virus. Great. The more fans, the better. The...
- US official — we went to Israel first (3)
- traintosiberia: OMG! Why I don”t have that Stockholm Syndrome yet! How long do I have to feign that I have it.
- Annie Robbins: a U.S. official…asked to remain anonymous owing to the sensitive nature of the issue. sensitive?...
- Carllarc: proof of ‘Israel firsters’, for sure
- Israel lobby’s favorite senator tries to erase Palestinian refugee status for millions (23)
- piotr: How many Jews who made aliya were actual refugees from Roman persecution? Thus the “Jew who taunted...
- Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism (113)
- yourstruly: what was that sound? the special relationship breaking down and the loud and sustained chorus that...
- MHughes976: I’m still a bit uncertain about what R.Brian means by ‘Zionism’: what proposition did...
- yourstruly: given, that the israel’s brutal occupation of palestine is why much of the arab/islamic world hates...
- Resume builders: Be a broken record on Iran, cheer authoritarians in Gulf (1)
Our Writers
- Philip Weiss
- Kate
- Annie Robbins
- Adam Horowitz
- Today in Palestine
- Matthew Taylor
- Alex Kane
- Max Blumenthal
Blogroll
The War of Ideas in the Middle East
OK, the edit isn't working. The linked document (an interview with the UNRWA spokesman, not exactly objective) has nothing about son of Cambodians. Nor does its linked document, which doesn't say anything about an official policy of classifying descendants as refugees, the closest it comes is:
"Tutsis who fled Rwanda between 1959 and 1962 and their descendants filled the ranks of the Rwandan Patriotic Front which invaded Rwanda from Uganda in October 1990. Many of these refugees had been living in the region for more than three decades."
Which could just be referring to the actual refugees, not their descendants since their descendants hadn't been living for more than three decades (as of 1990). Or could just be a sloppy way of reporting on a group that has both refugees and descendants.
When asked point blank about descendants of other refugee groups being classified as refugees, he said that UNHCR agrees that Palestinian descendants are refugees (going along with UNRWA) and talked about "protracted refugee situations" which also has nothing to do with descendants, just refugee situations lasting more than 5 years with more than 25k people displaced.
Frankly if an odd sentence in a cherry picked report, and some obfuscating change of subject is the closest the paid spokesman of UNRWA can come to proving that other refugee descendants are classified as refugees, that pretty much proves there is no such official policy.
Wasn't it 3 quarters of a million refugees originally?
" is in line with UNRWA’s practice of granting refugee status to descendants" You forgot "of Palestinians" no other refugee group passes refugee status on to their descendants.
Of course the State Department is against it, their primary job is sucking up to the Arabs for oil and to "help" with the war on terrorism.
"real gall" says the man telling Israel to dissolve itself.
No, it'll be another 50 years at least, since there are the 1967 refugees too. Although, I suppose in 30 years there might be few enough actual refugees alive that they will let in all the actual refugees. They will never let in the descendants, so either make peace without that or just prepare to be at war forever. I don't think it's in the Palestinians' best interest to be at war with Israel forever. It doesn't seem to be going too well for them. But they can suit themselves.
What you call "international law" I call "changing the rules of the game just to screw the Jews". For thousands of years, and even since then for anyone who isn't Jewish, land was taken by force. The Arabs even approved of that since they tried to take Jewish land by force after rejecting partition that would have left a slight majority of Jews in the Jewish areas. But as soon as Jews get some land, suddenly and retroactively its "international law says no".
@American
Racial? No. Cultural, and national yes. A Jew from anywhere in the world is welcome to attend services in my synagogue. The Asian Jews I know would disagree with you about cultural ties, as would the black Jews, so would the white Jews. Outsiders don't get to decide when someone else is a People. Otherwise the Palestinians wouldn't be a People. They have chosen to be a People instead of just part of Arabs in general only since 1967, and like you and the Jews, some outsiders don't consider them one, but they are a People nonetheless.
So what, the cited handbook doesn't say "lineal descendants" it says "dependents", that's minor children, possibly wives, not all your descendants of whatever age wherever they are. I doubt there are very many dependents of the original refugees. Basically, it would be limited to kids born in the last 18 years, to people at least 46 when the kids were born (for 1948 refugees that is).
A person who was kicked out of his home country is a refugee. A person who was not kicked out of his home country and lives in a refugee camp is just a resident of the camp, not a refugee. Refugee status is because you got kicked out or fled, not because you live in a camp with people who got kicked out or fled. Otherwise the volunteers who live there would be refugees too.
I didn't say all of it went to weapons manufacturers.
Totally different animal. "Head of the family" and "_DEPENDENTS_" not "DESCENDANTS". That means that if an actual refugee has young children the young children can get help while the parents are getting help, not that refugee status passes from generation to generation without limit.
If you are a child, the heads of the family are your parents. Once you grow up, that is no longer the head of your family, you are.
Thank you, you just disproved your own position.
Bad analogy. I don't think anyone counts the Jews in general as refugees. Any country that wants to is free to offer Palestinians, or Muslims generally, automatic citizenship. Just as any country that wants to is free to offer automatic citizenship to Christians, or Buddhists, or Atheists. Israel chooses to offer citizenship to Jews, not because they are refugees, but simply because Israel wants to.
We know what was done with the money given to Israel. Most of it went to U.S. weapons manufacturers.
So they don't allow Holocaust denial, but they do allow existence-of-the-Jewish-People denial.
"Territory can't be taken by force" This will come as a surprise to Turkey. Also China, the U.S., Spain, the countries that took chunks of German territory after WWII, oh, and every other country in the world, which all took territory by force.
Of course they represent the worlds largest refugee population. Every other refugee group in the world gets smaller over time as people die, or find citizenship elsewhere. The Palestinians are the only refugee group in the world where descendants are counted as refugees.
It's called "an analogy". Original article said that the beaches of Tel Aviv look nice but Palestinians can't go there. I pointed out (by analogy) that being at war with a country usually means that you can't go and enjoy their tourist attractions.
Beaches in Hawaii look nice, but Japanese and German nationals weren't allowed to go there during WWII. The Palestinians and the Israelis are at war, of course the Palestinians aren't being given free access to Israel.
Since no checking is done, and the UNRWA refugee status pays what in most of the third world Middle Eastern countries is a pretty good living, there probably are a lot of impostors.
Also, not funny about the Darfur, Rwanda and Holocaust victims.
Sorry, talknic, but one country happening to allow preferred immigration status doesn't make the Jews refugees. Show me any U.N. or other document that considers present descendants of Jewish Holocaust refugees to be refugees themselves.
Also, if you mean that post about UNHCR 184, that said "dependents", not "descendants".
There were millions of refugees after WWII. Many of them never allowed to return home. Guess what, their descendants aren't considered refugees.
@eljay
Not at all. Countries have the right to invite or not invite people based on whatever criterion they choose.
@talkback
That's a strawman argument. The right to decide who you let in is not a right to mass murder your own citizens.
No, since Israel is a sovereign country it should apply to whoever they want it to apply to. If they want a law of return that applies to red-headed, left-handed bald midgets with dandruff, they have the sovereign right to make such a law. As I said, it has nothing to do with refugee status of the Jews, or the Palestinians. I don't consider myself a refugee and I can only move to Israel with the permission of the Israeli government. Fortunately for me they are gracious enough that they extend that privilege (not a right) to me. The issues of refugee status and law of return are completely separate.
The law of return (not a right of return) is a law granting favorable immigration status. It is granted by the national laws of one country. Israel could just as easily change the law to not grant the right of return. Whether the Palestinian descendants are refugees has nothing to do with the law of return.
Actually, are there any other people in the world where the descendants of refugees are considered refugees? IOW, are they trying to make the definition for the Palestinians the same as for everyone else, or different from everyone else?
@elephantine
The difference the accident makes is that other Palestinians have done deliberately what he did by accident. Run their cars into Israeli soldiers or police then tried to get away. The accident made him look like a terrorist. Neither one of us was there and so we don't know whether he drove away because shots were fired at him or if shots were fired at him because he drove away in a panic. Considering the howls for blood from posters here when an Israeli accidentally hit a Palestinian and then drove away from the angry mob that was attacking his car before he even hit the kid, I'd think you could understand how a hit and run can be misinterpreted.
As for shooting him in the head. I don't know whether that seemed necessary to the guy that did it. I do know that Palestinians have set off suicide bombs when captured, which is why if it was murder the guy will probably get away with it.
Cause and effect. Cause is terrorist attacks made to look like harmless people, the effect is harmless people look like terrorists. If you make war in a way that makes your terrorist attacks look like car accidents, your car accidents will be mistaken for terrorist attacks. If you make war in a way that makes a person lying wounded in the street a deadly threat, then the enemy will interpret any of your people who are wounded in the street that way.
"Involved in a car accident" sounds so much more innocent than "ran over two cops in a hit-and-run accident".
Through the Carter Foundation. It's in their annual reports. It's not as though it is a secret.
And Carter gets 10s of millions from Saudi Arabia. But you like him. As for your employer, I'm sorry you lost your job, but that's not "the Lobby", that's your employer disagreeing with you and you not being willing to write what he wanted you to. Would you keep a Zionist on the payroll? Does that make you part of a Lobby?
Try Yahoo or Bing.
Bright clothing or dull clothing, neither can be seen through metal. The cab of the bulldozer is heavily armored to protect against Palestinians shooting the driver.
That's not the bulldozer you're looking for. That was a different (much smaller) bulldozer. In a picture taken much earlier in the day.
@tree
Why buried? You have to dispose of them somehow. As for what he took, read the linked article. "Samples for histological testing". Google it. That means microscope slides of material, not body parts.
@talknic
"A single cell is a body part". Better not sneeze then, or you could be accused of getting body parts everywhere. Reductio ad absurdem. Just in case you didn't understand the point, you leave cells all over the place just walking around. Lots of the dust in your house comes from your dead skin cells. So quit leaving body parts around.
Corrie was DOA at the hospital, it was too late by that point to harvest her organs. Much less later.
@Cliff
About microscope slide samples? Why would he? Taking samples is a routine part of any autopsy. That's like asking "why didn't he tell them he wore gloves for the autopsy and threw them out afterward?"
This is America. Anybody can sue anybody for anything. The question is can they win? My guess would be not, but I'm not making that call as a lawyer.
Well, most religions don't care about microscope samples taken for autopsy testing.
What do you think we are, Mormons? You can't posthumously convert and we don't even encourage people to convert while they are alive. If you really want to convert, it takes dedication and about a year of studying.
@Daniel Rich
Sorry, was that supposed to be a picture of the bulldozer that hit her? Wrong picture, wrong time, wrong bulldozer. That was a picture taken earlier in the day of a different bulldozer. Oh, and the dramatic picture of her between a bulldozer and a house? Photoshopped together by one of the ISM guys who later confessed to having photoshopped it.
That's the point, Cliff, it doesn't fight them, it just passively defends the driver from them. A defense is not a weapon. Hence armor plating something is not "weaponizing" it. Q.E.D.
Oh, well you could look at the link in the original article:
"Dr. Hiss also disclosed that he had kept samples from Rachel’s body for histological testing without informing her family."
I love the overblown language though: "kept pieces of her body". Like he has her head on a stick in his office or something rather than routine samples.
It's armor plated to defend itself against terrorist attacks.
The point is the double standard. Here you are calling this coroner the next best thing to the Devil himself for doing nothing that is unusual in the U.S. or any other country that you would have no complaint about. In other words, you are only complaining because he is Israeli.
Yeah, because no coroner in the U.S. would ever keep samples (you know, like blood samples) for histological testing. Except, wait, sure they would. Histological testing is for things like diseases, the kind of samples kept for that would be maybe some skin cells, you use a microscope for this kind of testing. We're not talking hands and feet here.
I love the language here. A bulldozer outfitted with purely defensive items, and passive defensive items at that (shields) is "weaponized".
Buried with other biological samples. What makes you think that isn't how that particular lab disposes of microscope slides of human tissue? If the slides are kept for some period after the body is released it wouldn't be practical to hold up the funeral or dig up the body to put the slides back with the body, but you can always give them some kind of burial. As for benefit of the doubt, I don't have to give him the benefit of the doubt, I am going by what the linked document said, which was samples for histological testing, not body parts.
The guy shouldn't have taken the kid's flag. I saw a picture of the kid fighting with a guy over the flag. What I don't see is what happened after that, or what the policeman saw, from whatever angle he saw things. For all I know the flag and the chase were unrelated. Post hoc ergo propter hoc falacy. Now, if you have a picture or video where the police started chasing the kid, I'll be happy to look at it. It may be that the cop was wrong to chase the kid, but that doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't interfere with police business when you don't know what is going on.
Yeah, sorry, that doesn't work either, not held at that angle. Like I said, watch the video, it really is just to stop it from swinging around.
Anarchists everywhere thank you for your dedication to the cause.
I'm talking about the Rachel Corrie issue. The selling of organs (would have to be for medical research, too late to use them in people by the time the coroner gets them) was unethical. That doesn't make taking samples as a routine part of an autopsy unethical.
Actually, the article was posted by the woman who blocked the cop. Who was not (And doesn't in the article claim to be) an eyewitness to the earlier incident, which took place way up the block. She must have gotten the info online afterward like the rest of us. _after_ she interfered with the cop. At the time, all she knew was that the cop was chasing the kid. For all she knew when she interfered, the kid had just stolen something.
Oh is _that_ who the guy in black was? They should have arrested her. but even the police make mistakes from time to time.
You can't interfere with the police on the grounds that you "don't know that they aren't going to kill someone". Are you even listening to yourself? You could say that about any cop. Do you make a habit of blocking policemen in pursuit? Why not, since "how do you know they aren't going to kill whoever they are chasing"?
@Talkback
OK, I stand corrected, it isn't just Woody Tanaka that doesn't know the difference between a policeman trying to arrest someone and a Nazi trying to kill someone.
@tree
Look at the video. He wasn't pointing the gun at the kid just grabbing it one handed by the barrel, not the trigger, to keep it from swinging wildly on its strap as he skidded to a stop and changed direction. That's not how you hold a rifle to shoot someone.
They gave up the "death to the local native tribe" chants a little while after the time the local native tribes stopped killing the American settlers. So when the Palestinians knock off the terrorism, I expect the "death to Arabs" nonsense to stop as well.
Straw man. Like Great Britain, Israel does not have a single specific Constitution. It does have Basic Laws that serve the same purpose.
Microscope sample snatching, not organ snatching, but thanks for the vivid imagery.
He probably intended to arrest him. I think if you look into it, you'll find that is a common reason for police to chase people without any intention of killing them or otherwise harming them. As to the reason for the attempted arrest, none of that is on the video.
I suggest you not give "Rodney King" as a reason for interfering with a police officer in America. Just because some police have committed crimes is not a generically applicable reason that justifies interfering with a random police officer.
@tree
Confused two people? No. Didn't realize who was doing it deliberately among multiple people in the way? Could be.
@Woody Tanaka
re: Nazis killing Jews.
Wow, you (not the generic "you" you, Woody Tanaka in particular) really can't tell the difference, can you? There is no suggestion that the police officer in this case was going to kill the kid, so your analogy fails.
4th of July celebration in the U.S.?
link to dallasphelps.com
Yeah, yeah, "Israel bad" got it.
You'd have to ask Him. If he answers, though, odds are you are crazy.
Some free advice, if a policeman is chasing someone don't interfere. Regardless of what that person did, interfering with the police is a crime. I'm shocked that this site would support letting an innocent red crescent volunteer go down for someone else's crime.
Since you bring it up, interfering with the police _is_ a crime in every country I've ever heard of. So is assaulting a police officer. What country is going to make it legal to get in the way of and push the police?
Unfortunate that they made a mistake and arrested the wrong person for interfering though. You should probably go in and confess to get that red crescent volunteer out of trouble.
Have to disagree with the chanters on the Temple though, assuming there is a God and He wants it rebuilt, He'll let us know when.
No, I don't find anything wrong with it because it wasn't a forced confession and because it's kosher in the U.S., which I hold as the gold standard for coddling suspects.
BTW, I love that you keep harping about "organ snatching" when we are talking about microscope slides of samples.
Nope. I can't think of a situation in the modern world where throwing stones at people is a good idea. It is dangerous to the unarmed, but not dangerous enough to stop them from fighting back, and provocative to the armed. It has no chance of settling anything satisfactorily to the stone thrower.
Nothing's wrong with me. What's wrong with you that you think conspiring to throw stones at people is ok?
Half of a good point, but you ruined the other half with the straw man.
Unreliability of _forced_ confessions is a reason to keep evidence out. This was not a forced confession. The kid wasn't beaten, or tortured. Unreliability is why the evidence from the other people was ruled out. This kid wasn't waterboarded, if he had been then the statements would be unreliable and would have been kept out.
In the U.S., you can use illegally obtained statements against other defendants, just not against the one who made them in the first place. Same for illegally obtained evidence. If the cops find evidence against Tom and Harry in a warrantless search of Harry's house (where Tom doesn't live) then that evidence can be used against Tom, but not Harry.
OK, one of your residents of the Arab village in this story went up a few years ago to burn down the homes of the "illegal settlers", and stabbed a 9 year old child. Mr.Stabby committed "armed home invasion" and Killing Mr.Stabby would be "justifiable homicide" regardless of your opinion of his "private or real property rights". Happy?
The world in which even illegal squatters don't want to be burned to death in their homes. What world do you live in?
No, even at 2:02 the bush in the foreground isn't there. Also notice that from that angle the building on top of the hill is more obscured than in the video with the fire. It's a spot to camera's right of the place with the fire.
In the independence war, the Arabs killed over 6000 Jews. It was hardly one sided. The Arabs just happened to lose.
Only thing I could see at 1:28 on either left corner that even might be smoke. It might also be a distance blurred tree for all I can tell. I'm not agreeing with him about the fire in the earlier video, just trying to figure out what he is referring to. Unless he means 1:28 of some other video.
However, the first video posted shows plainly that there is a fire, that the Jews are fighting it, and that the Palestinians are attacking the people fighting the fire. As to the second posted one, it is shot from farther to the right (of the cameraman) than the first and doesn't pan far enough to the left to see the area where the fire is in the first posted video. So it is ambiguous.
Actually, contrary to the movies, real bullets don't spark when they hit.
@Woody Tanaka
Then so are all adult Palestinians (non-Citizens) who go into Israel.
Does he mean the amorphous grey thing on the top of the hill (upper left corner) is smoke from a small fire?
Why ask "why would they", when it is clear from videos that they were attacking the fire crews trying to put it out. The appropriate question is "why did they".
The fires were closer to the Jewish side. The settlers came over to the source of the attacks on their firefighters.
"Innocent until proven guilty" applies to court. Not to dangerous fugitives who make themselves safer to kill than to capture. If he wanted due process, he should have turned himself in.
As for administrative detention, not without judicial review, and not for political reasons. Israel has judicial review and imprisons terrorists, not purely political figures.
@Sumud
Of course there was a surrender option, he could have turned himself in at any U.S. embassy in the Middle East any time he wanted.
One of my favorite legal doctrines, the "fugitive disentitlement doctrine" says that you get no say in court if you are a fugitive.
@cloakanddagger
Sure. Right after you show me the part of the U.S. Constitution that says abortion is ok. Not everything is explicit, it's not that long a document.
As my dad said, "if the guy has a gun throw a stone at him". No, wait, he said "just hand over your wallet, it's not worth dying over".
Kids, no matter how right you think you are, don't throw a rock at a guy with a gun.
Pretty basic safety tip.
Until someone is in the hands of the government, it is the executive branch's perogative to kill them if they are dangerous and can't be captured safely. Obama has given permission to kill only when they are dangerous, in foreign countries, _and_ cannot be captured safely. We have a capture or kill list, not a kill list.
It is no different than giving police permission to shoot to kill an armed suspect who won't surrender. Think the hostage taker who gets killed in America by a police sniper gets due process or judicial oversight?
If they want due process they are free to surrender peacefully.
I have a life outside of you Annie.
It's not so much copyrights in particular as that the President is trying to make an end run around a Constitutional limitation on his rightful powers. The Constitution vests power over intellectual property with the Congress, not the President. That makes a copyright agreement an unconstitutional subject for an executive order. Any international agreement in Congress's bailiwick has to be ratified as a treaty by a 2/3 vote by the Senate (or as various other things that all require some form of congressional approval).
Regardless of how much I approve of Obama's programs, or disapprove of Romney, this is a usurpation of power that is disturbing.
There are other reasons to vote against Obama besides Israel. I'll probably vote for him, but his use of an executive order to foist ACTA (a treaty about copyrights) on the U.S. makes me hesitant to support him.
Wow, I'm not sure whether that is deliberately invoking the blood libel or just doing it accidentally.
Great, are they going to change the headline then?
The ICJ had no jurisdiction in the case you're are referring to. They didn't go into any reasoning for why the GCs should apply, they just assumed it should. Also as you said. the Palestinians were turned down for membership in the GCs in 1989 (ironically, since they weren't a state). But at the end of it all, dress it up in any pompous quasi-legal obfuscation and the fact remains that the Palestinians do not obey the GCs. So any complaints about Israel breaking them from the Palestinians are like someone whining that someone stole something from him that he stole from someone else.
Similar to the clean hands doctrine.
To be a high contracting party, the Palestinians have to join the treaty, they haven't. As for the U.N. Security Council, assuming they even said that, since you sometimes distort what they say, I'm just assuming for the sake of argument, they can say that black is white, that doesn't make it so.
The way I know the Palestinians aren't bound by the GCs is that they never follow them. Where was Gilad Shalit's GC rights? Red cross visits? Nope. Contact with family through letters? Nope. Nowhere. Because the Palestinians don't follow the GCs. So they can live with the consequences.
The GCs also say you aren't allowed to bomb civilian targets, the Palestinians prefer civilian targets. The attempt to apply the GCs to the Palestinians when they neither signed them nor obey them is a violation of the GCs themselves and is purely an attempt to tie Israel's hands while leaving the Palestinians free to murder Israelis.
@Annie Robbins
Of course I saw it. Saw it and mentioned it. I dismiss it as merely a label of convenience rather than a policy statement. They probably have similar reports going back well before Gaza was de-occupied and just copy the format from them without bothering to update them. I guess Arafat and Sharon must be alive and in charge too, since a leftover reference in a new letter said so.
@Annie Robbins
According to your link about the US "recognizing" that Gaza is currently occupied.
"Residents of the Gaza Strip under Hamas had no right to political participation or to choose their government. Other human rights problems in the Gaza Strip included reports that Hamas security forces continued to kill, torture, kidnap, arbitrarily detain, and harass Fatah members and other Palestinians with impunity. There were reports of abuse of prisoners and failure to provide fair trials to those accused. Hamas also strictly restricted the freedom of speech, religion, and movement of the Gaza Strip residents. Corruption reportedly was a problem. Hamas promoted gender discrimination against women. Domestic violence against women also remained a problem. Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip launched rockets and mortars against civilian targets in Israel."
Looks like the U.S. has some notion that Hamas is in charge in Gaza. Since Hamas isn't a branch of the IDF, I guess that shows that the U.S. doesn't consider Gaza occupied. It says it was occupied in 1967, but nothing about whether it is occupied now. It just seems to be lumped into the section on occupied territories because it was occupied back then. Still in that section for convenience, not a policy statement.
@Hostage
Interesting. If your statements about "no delay between invasion and occupation" are accurate, then I stand corrected on that point. In that case, during Cast Lead, Gaza (or at least the parts of it with Israeli troops) was once again occupied. However, since there are no Israeli troops in Gaza now, it isn't occupied now.
Also, you are wrong about no loopholes. "Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it." 4th Geneva Article 4.
@Blake
Sea and airspace, not land. And sorry to keep harping on this, but for territory to be occupied the occupier has to occupy it, not just blockade it.
Even during Cast Lead the Israelis weren't acting as a de facto government of Gaza, so that was an invasion, not an occupation.
@Hostage
Yeah, except that what you think you know about law just shows that you aren't worth listening to on the subject. You don't even know how to read a statute.
As for the U.N., when the rest of the world starts obeying them when it isn't in their own best interests to do it, then what they make will be law. Until then it is just suggestions, particularly since it "calls for" humanitarian assistance but does not mandate anything. But even taking what you say as correct (which I don't), Israel has no more obligation to provide for the Palestinians than Micronesia does.
Without the siege and the donations they get as a result, the Palestinians would probably be in about the same situation as Egypt, instead of much better off financially.
The blockade is a security measure, not a punishment. You are the one making a positive assertion. To prove something is legal, someone would have to cut and paste every international treaty in the world and say, "see it doesn't say it is illegal". To prove that something is illegal, all you have to do is cite one part of one treaty where it says it is illegal.
And yet somehow, I doubt you are going to be able to come up with anything that proves me wrong. Cite the treaty or piece of international law that says a blockader has to provide for the blockaded.