{"id":5571,"date":"2010-05-31T00:00:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-30T22:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=5571"},"modified":"2010-05-31T00:22:23","modified_gmt":"2010-05-30T22:22:23","slug":"what-is-gazas-legal-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/05\/what-is-gazas-legal-status\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Gaza’s Legal Status?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian-Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, said Israel \u201cconfuses\u201d occupation with colonization.<\/em><\/p>\n

Antalya: While Israel withdrew its troops and colonies from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, it has failed to convince the international community that its occupation of the tiny strip of territory has ended. Israel has vowed to stop the flotilla by any means necessary, but under what legal pretext it aims to do so is unclear.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s flags, tanks and colonists have ended their permanent presence on the strip, but Israel continues to control Gaza\u2019s borders, airspace and territorial waters. The United Nations and the international community continue to consider the strip to be occupied by Israel, along with the West Bank and occupied Arab East Jerusalem. Why then does Israel insist that the occupation of Gaza has ended?<\/p>\n

Canadian-Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, said Israel \u201cconfuses\u201d occupation with colonisation. While the colonisation of Gaza, in the form of its military and settlement presence there, ended in 2005, its occupation continues, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter it pulled out [of Gaza], the Israeli government went to the Supreme Court to get an assessment as to whether Gaza was still occupied. The court determined that Gaza was no longer occupied,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, she said, Israel\u2019s occupation of Gaza has intensified, as it controls every aspect of life in Gaza, including the population registry and the issuance of identity documents. Israel however is expected to face a dilemma in legally justifying any attempt to bar the Freedom Flotilla. If Gaza was indeed liberated territory, any Israeli action in its territorial waters would be considered as having taken place in the waters of another entity.<\/p>\n

Israel, however, has a loophole. It has designated Gaza as a \u201chostile entity\u201d and has reserved the right to protect itself from it. Buttu said that that is where Israel \u201ctraps itself\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerritory is either occupied or it\u2019s not. There\u2019s no shade in between. It\u2019s like being half-pregnant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She stressed, however, that as an occupying power, its laws hold little credibility, saying that international law, and specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention, should be the first reference. If all else fails, Israel could cite the security provisions in the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation of 1993, under which it has certain rights in a \u201csecurity perimeter\u201d.<\/p>\n

Buttu argued, however, that those security perimeters were clearly defined in Oslo, but violated by Israel. Not only does Israel extend its activities to further than the defined perimeter, she said, it has also extracted natural gas off Gaza\u2019s coastline, \u201cwhich belongs to Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe caveat under Oslo is that in 2001 Israel declared Oslo dead\u2026 So it\u2019s not really an argument any longer. They can\u2019t say we want to maintain the security aspects of Oslo but we\u2019re going to keep building colonies [in the West Bank] at the same time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

GO TO ORIGINAL \u2013 GULFNEWS.COM<\/a><\/p>\n

Join the BDS-Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions<\/span><\/em> <\/strong>campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation, the apartheid wall, and its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people: DON’T BUY<\/strong><\/span> products whose BARCODE<\/strong><\/span> starts with 729<\/strong><\/span>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian-Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, said Israel \u201cconfuses\u201d occupation with colonization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}