On 14 September 1967, three months after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Egyptian Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights, the legal counsel for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, wrote a legal opinion for his Minister, Abba Eban. Meron, a Holocaust survivor who later become a law professor at New York University and would complete his illustrious career as president of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, advised Eban that the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibited the establishment of civilian settlements in occupied territories. Israel, as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, was obliged to comply. The prohibition in international law, Meron wrote, was:
“categorical and is not conditioned on the motives or purposes of the transfer, and is aimed at preventing colonization of conquered territory by citizens of the conquering state.”Read more
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