(Washington D.C., 11/19/2019) — The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) expresses its dismay and abjectly reproves the Trump Administration’s abrupt U-turn against longstanding International Law and consistent and clear United States policy since 1978 of the illegality of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands in the Occupied West Bank.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s attempt to legitimize Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in his ill-advised and provocative unilateral announcement yesterday:
- Directly flouts the international community’s clarion consensus that “all settlement activity is illegal under international law” (EU response statement)
- Significantly erodes the prospects for a lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis and in the larger Middle East
- Sends a flagrant message affirming lawlessness to the world and endorsing colonialism, with the U.S. rejecting the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and any international framework of law in favor of endorsing the right of stronger countries to occupy, populate, and annex the land of weak nations and peoples based on fictitious interpretations of “unique facts of history” and fait accompli “circumstances”
- Shames the United States before the world for selling its universal morality for the parochial support of narrow domestic special interests and perceived personal political gain
- Jeopardizes the security of American citizens, diplomats and officers, facilities, and private interests
- Gives Israelis unequivocal and unlimited weapons, financial, and diplomatic aid with one hand, while depriving Palestinians of the most basic life needs and human dignity with the other; and then offers to arbitrate sham “mutual” negotiations for peace through a fraudulent “Deal of the Century” that it is already being unilaterally implemented
The United Nations Charter prohibits countries from seizing the territory of others by military force. It further bars occupying powers from annexing such land, requiring the land’s return to the governance of its people at the cessation of hostilities. Moreover, the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 — one of the most ratified international treaties in existence — clearly bans occupying nations from transplanting their own civilian population into territories it occupies.
Yet today international monitoring groups tell us that under the unprecedented cover President Trump has afforded them, the Israelis have been conducting a massive settlement push. More than 600,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Further, a succession of The Fourth Geneva Convention articles prohibits occupying powers from (31) coercion; (32) corporal punishment and torture; (33) collective punishment, pillage, and reprisal; and (34) taking hostages from the people it occupies. Israel has continuously and, as we speak, is presently in violation of every one of these prohibitions with impunity — and this is what the Trump Administration is now endorsing against the will and consensus of an international agreement its wiser predecessors made America a prime author of and signatory to. Moreover, this administration is committing this transgression nakedly before the world.
The Trump administration’s absurd announcement yesterday attempting to soft-soap the illegality of the Israelis’ egregious land-squatting usurpation of Palestinian land tolls yet another flagrantly inequitable abetting of America’s one-sided patronage on behalf of the Israelis against the besieged and beleaguered Palestinians — a vulnerable people with no champion — even before Trump’s still-to-be-disclosed mockery of a peace plan has been presented.
- In 2017, Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, trashing 50 years of US policy holding the city’s status in abeyance for the peace parties’ mutual determination.
- In 2018, the US formally opened its embassy in the city.
- In 2018, the US totally and callously cut its contributions to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency responsible for the care of Palestinian refugees.
- In March 2019, Trump recognized the internationally unlawful 1981 Israeli annexation of the occupied Golan Heights from Syria.
USCMO reminds that no administration, including the current American one, is vested with the authority or legal capacity to revoke international law; nor the privilege of altering the will of the global community expressed in its legally binding resolutions. Nor can this U.S. administration bestow sanction upon Israeli settlements of occupied Palestinian lands.
“A change in the policy position of one state does not modify existing international law, nor its interpretation by the International Court of Justice and the Security Council,” said UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric today in a press conference on the new position of the current US administration.
The European Union, as well, “calls on Israel to end all settlement activity, in line with its obligations as an occupying power,” said EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini.
By seeking to wield the power and (rapidly depleting) historical prestige of America in so unjust and self-serving a way, Trump is, in fact, dealing a deathblow to justice and peace — not only for Palestine, but across every continent, as it green-lights stronger powers to invade the lands, and supplant the peoples, of their weaker neighbors.
The voice of the international community, the UN Secretariat, declared today “we continue to follow the longstanding position of the United Nations that the Israeli settlements are in breach of international law.”
This resolution, reaffirmed in 2016, that Israeli establishment of settlements on Palestinian land occupied since 1967 have “no legal validity,” and constitute a “flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.” Fully 14 members voted in favor of that resolution, leaving the US standing alone in abstention.
Israelis cite for the legitimacy of their own existence the 1947 UN General Assembly partition plan for British Mandate Palestine. In no semblance does this express any lawful Israeli accession to the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, the reverse is true. It implies the rejection of this Israeli claim.
The war crimes of World War II formed a major impetus for codifying international law and The Geneva Conventions, with the US in the lead and the prevention of the horrific plight of a then-vulnerable people a shocking motivation. We should not now permit these international rules and agreements to melt away in the fires of amnesic, insatiable appetites of acquisitiveness and shortsighted, self-seeking political expediencies.
