ISRAEL NOT ENTITLED TO ‘SELF-DEFENSE’ IN OCCUPIED AREAS: ANALYST

Analyst Marjorie Cohn has blasted the US for maintaining the myth that Israel is entitled to “self-defense” as it reduces Gaza to rubble after suppressing Muslim worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and evicting Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah community to allow Israeli settlers to move in.

Writing for Truthout, Cohn said that under international law, “the Palestinians have a lawful right to resist Israel’s occupation of their lands, including through armed struggle.

In 1982, the UN General Assembly “reaffirmed the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle."

Thus, the Biden administration is wrong to claim that Israel is acting in self-defense against the Hamas rockets, but under international law, Israel, as an occupying force, does not have the right to use military force in self-defense against its occupied territory.

Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and associate professor at Rutgers University, wrote in Jadaliyya, “A state cannot simultaneously exercise control over territory it occupies and militarily attack that territory on the claim that it is ‘foreign’ and poses an exogenous national security threat. In doing precisely that, Israel is asserting rights that may be consistent with colonial domination but simply do not exist under international law.”

Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories and professor emeritus at Princeton University, and Virginia Tilley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, co-authored a report for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in 2017. It found “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians constitutes “the crime of Apartheid.”

In January 2021, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem issued a report titled, “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid.” Like B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch (HRW) had long resisted charging that Israeli leaders were committing the crime of apartheid.

But on April 27, HRW issued a detailed report describing Israel’s “intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” including East Jerusalem.

The report added that this Israeli government intent “has been coupled with the systematic oppression of Palestinians and inhumane acts committed against them. When these three elements occur together, they amount to the crime of apartheid.”

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