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What 'Occupation'?

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  • What 'Occupation'?

    WHAT 'OCCUPATION'?
    By Ashley Perry

    Jerusalem Post
    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=12 20353263300&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowF ull
    Sept 2 2008

    The recent occurrences in Georgia present a good opportunity to
    compare how the media describe certain world events.

    The conflict between Georgia and Russia was immediately cited by
    President Mikhail Saakashvili as an "occupation of Georgia." The case
    involved a sovereign independent nation where a neighboring hostile
    army held onto and asserted its authority over territory within its
    recognized boundaries. This is a classic definition of an "occupation."

    The Hague Conventions of 1907 state specifically that "territory is
    considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of
    the hostile army." However, much of the world's media do not appear
    to have knowledge of the legal definitions in its appellation of the
    Georgia-Russia conflict.

    Most of the major media organizations have only used the word
    "occupation" when quoting Saakashvili or others like British Foreign
    Secretary David Milliband. Agence France Presse in almost every
    report used the term "occupation" in quotation marks, or claimed that
    "Tiblisi has labeled them [the Russians] an occupying force." Many
    other media organizations follow suit.

    Senior British journalist Peter Wilby implies in The Guardian that
    Saakashvili has used terms like occupation to win a public relations
    battle. He contends that the Georgian president knows which words pull
    heartstrings in the West. "Note the use of terms that trigger Western
    media interest: civilian victims, nuclear, humanitarian, occupation,
    ethnic cleansing," Wilby wrote.

    There is a sort of irony in the fact that The Guardian, long accused
    of treating Israel unfairly in its reporting, has an article clearly
    stating how certain words are utilized to garner sympathy for a
    particular cause, when all these terms have been used against Israel
    in the past - and mostly without quotation marks.

    ISRAEL DOES not fit the literal definition of an occupying force. The
    Hague Conventions and the later Geneva Conventions of 1949 do not
    appear to apply definitively to the West Bank. The West Bank has
    never been sovereign territory, and was won from a nation which
    held no legal claim to the area. After Israel conquered the West
    Bank and Gaza, former Supreme Court president Meir Shamgar wrote
    in the 1970s that there is no de jure applicability of the Fourth
    Geneva Convention regarding occupied territories to the West Bank
    and Gaza Strip, since the convention "is based on the assumption that
    there had been a sovereign which was ousted, and that it had been a
    legitimate sovereign."

    To take it a step further, former US State Department legal adviser
    Stephen Schwebel, who later headed the International Court of Justice
    in The Hague, wrote in 1970 regarding Israel's case: "Where the prior
    holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state
    which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of
    self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title."

    OBVIOUSLY, MANY would disagree with these formulations. However,
    there is enough evidence to contend that Israel is not "occupying"
    the West Bank according to the letter of international law. This
    is further codified in UN Security Council Resolution 242 which,
    according to its drafters, allows Israel to hold onto territories
    it won in the 1967 war. This stands in contradistinction to other
    theaters of conflict and occupation.

    In 1975, an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice
    established that Western Sahara was not under Moroccan territorial
    sovereignty. Nevertheless, when the Western Sahara receives any
    column inches in the international media, it is seldom referred to as
    "occupied."

    Nagorno-Karabakh, the area of Azerbaijan claimed as an independent
    republic by indigenous Armenian separatists, is in the main referred
    to as "disputed."

    Of course, the media attention Tibet received as a result of China's
    holding the Summer Olympics provided another recent comparison. Again,
    the famous quotation marks are frequently applied when using the
    term "occupation" - if the word is used at all - to China's control
    of Tibet.

    There are many other examples of territories that could denote an
    occupation but are referred to as "disputed."

    According to Dore Gold, former ambassador to the UN and president of
    the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, there appears to be a major
    disparity in the terminology describing conflicts around the globe.

    "Of course each situation has its own unique history, but in a variety
    of other territorial disputes - from northern Cyprus to the Kurile
    Islands to Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf, which have involved some
    degree of armed conflict - the term 'occupied territories' is not
    commonly used in international discourse. Thus, the case of the West
    Bank appears to be a special exception," Gold wrote.

    THE TERM occupation has been long used as an accusation by the
    Palestinians in what Wilby would describe as a "PR war." However, as
    opposed to how circumspect the world media are about other territorial
    disagreements, they are almost unequivocal that the West Bank is
    "occupied."

    This has had many ramifications as the UN now uses the term "occupied
    territories" as if by rote in its resolutions when describing the
    West Bank. Perhaps even more worryingly, the Israeli government has
    bought into this terminology, which flies in the face of its own
    legal opinions.

    The Road Map which was agreed to by the government referred to an
    "occupation that began in 1967," and soon after prime minister
    Ariel Sharon criticized what he called the "occupation" in the
    territories. By referring to the West Bank as occupied, Sharon broke
    one of the greatest taboos in Israeli governmental policy.

    Today, it has almost become commonplace for high-ranking
    officials like Tzipi Livni to use the term "occupation" in their
    speeches. Consequently, the government has adopted the language of
    its accusers in the media, and has thus handed itself a major defeat
    in its own PR war.

    The writer is an editor at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
    for the Middle East Strategic Information Project.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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