Gabriel Helou

“We should not forget that there is a callous and manifest unlawfulness about this network of Israeli prisons, all but one of the 19 being located in Israel, in direct violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention governing belligerent occupation: “Protected persons accused of offenses shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve therein.”  Underlying such a provision of law is a humane impulse: compelling an individual to be imprisoned in the occupying country imposes a geographic separation from family and homeland, which in the Israeli case is accentuated by a permit system that as a practical matter makes family visits from occupied Palestine a virtual impossibility. With respect to prisoners from Gaza, there are virtually no prison visits allowed even if sentences are for several decades or lifetime. As is widely known, the people of Gaza have been subject to a punitive blockade maintained ever since mid-2007 that involves a massive ...

If pressing Israel to freeze settlement construction in 2009 was a “tactical mistake” -  according to Hillary Clinton - then the Israeli settlement policy itself is a “tactical war crime”.

“ Recent demolitions and displacement Over the past two years, 126 Palestinians have had their homes demolished and some have been forcibly transferred out of these dislocated communities as a result of demolitions: these include 51 people from the Al Khalayla Bedouin community, 63 from the Tel Al Addasa Bedouin community and 12 from Khirbet Khamis.6 Outstanding demolition orders against residential and livelihood structures continue to threaten other dislocated communities with displacement and/or the erosion of livelihood sources, including Khirbet Khamis, An Nabi Samwil village and its nearby Bedouin community, Al Khalayla and Ras Shihadeh Bedouins. Silent displacement: the case of An Nabi Samwil In other cases, difficult living conditions, the denial of residency permits by the Israeli authorities and the inability to build as a result of planning and building restrictions have forced families to move out to the remainder of the West Bank. For example, according to ...

ICJ Advisory Opinion on the “LEGAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF A WALL IN THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY” - 9 July 2004 “73. In the 1967 armed conflict, Israeli forces occupied all the territories which had constituted Palestine under British Mandate (including those known as the West Bank, lying to the east of the Green Line). 74. On 22 November 1967, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 242 (1967), which emphasized the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war and called for the “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”, and “Termination of all claims or states of belligerency”. 75. From 1967 onwards, Israel took a number of measures in these territories aimed at changing the status of the City of Jerusalem. The Security Council, after recalling on a number of occasions “the principle that acquisition of territory by military conquest is inadmissible”, condemned those measures and, by resolution ...

Chronology of events : An-Naksa, the Debacle, also known as June 1967 War or the Six Day War. On the morning of Monday, June 5, 1967, Israeli military aircraft raided the Egyptian airfields, destroying the bulk of the Egyptian Air Force. Ground attacks started immediately thereafter on the Jordanian and Syrian fronts, bound to Egypt with military common defense pacts. The Israeli Air Force ravaged the Sinai Peninsula with almost no fight - Egyptian units deprived of air cover. By Friday June 9, the Israeli Army stood on the East Bank of Suez Canal, captured the Golan Heights and the rest of the Palestinian territories (Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza Strip).  Since the start of the occupation, Israeli policies and practices under various governments - in a striking challenge to international law and UN Security Council resolutions - have been characterized by: - confiscation of land; - construction of settlements; - crushing Palestinian resistanc...