UN Security Council Resolution 446 | ||
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![]() Map of territories occupied by Israel | ||
Date | 22 March 1979 | |
Meeting no. | 2,134 | |
Code | S/RES/446 (Document) | |
Subject | Territories occupied by Israel | |
Voting summary |
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Result | Adopted | |
Security Council composition | ||
Permanent members | ||
Non-permanent members | ||
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United Nations Security Council resolution 446, adopted on 22 March 1979, concerned the issue of Israeli settlements in the "Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem". [1] This refers to the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip as well as the Syrian Golan Heights.
In the resolution, the Security Council determined: "that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East".
The resolution was adopted by 12 votes to none, with 3 abstentions from Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
The Security Council,
Having heard the statement of the Permanent Representative of Jordan and other statements made before the Council,
Stressing the urgent need to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East,
Affirming once more that the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,
1. Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East;
2. Strongly deplores the failure of Israel to abide by Security Council resolutions 237 (1967) of 14 June 1967, 252 (1968) of 21 May 1968 and 298 (1971) of 25 September 1971 and the consensus statement by the President of the Security Council on 11 November 1976 and General Assembly resolutions 2253 (ES-V) and 2254 (ES-V) of 4 and 14 July 1967, 32/5 of 28 October 1977 and 33/113 of 18 December 1978;
3. Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories;
4. Establishes a Commission consisting of three members of the Security Council, to be appointed by the President of the Council after consultations with the members of the Council, to examine the situation relating to settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem;
5. Requests the Commission to submit its report to the Security Council by 1 July 1979;
6. Requests the Secretary-General to provide the Commission with the necessary facilities to enable it to carry out its mission.
7. Decides to keep the situation in the occupied territories under constant and close scrutiny and to reconvene in July 1979 to review the situation in the light of the findings of the Commission.
Resolution 446 affirms "once more that the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem". Tomis Kapitan reports that:
Israel's argument against the applicability of the convention was formulated by Meir Shamgar and is based on an interpretation of Article 2, which reads:
The government's argument (first made by Moshe Dayan in a speech to the UN in 1977) is that neither the West Bank nor Gaza were the territory of a "High Contracting Power" at the time they were occupied by Israel and that therefore the Convention does not apply. [4] [5]
In 1993 the UN Security Council "acting under Chapter VII of the Charter on the United Nations" approved a report by the Secretary General which concluded beyond doubt that the law applicable in armed conflict as embodied in the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the Hague Convention (IV) of 18 October 1907 had become part of international customary law. Breaches of the principles contained in the conventions were subsequently placed within the competence of international criminal tribunals, including International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and International Criminal Court. [6]
Gershom Gorenberg has written that the Israeli government knew at the outset that it was violating the Geneva Convention by creating civilian settlements in the territories under IDF administration. He explained that as the legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron was the Israeli government's expert on international law. On 16 September 1967 Meron wrote a top secret memo to Mr. Adi Yafeh, Political Secretary of the Prime Minister regarding "Settlement in the Administered Territories" which said "My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the Administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." [7] Moshe Dayan authored a secret memo in 1968 proposing massive settlement in the territories which said "Settling Israelis in administered territory, as is known, contravenes international conventions, but there is nothing essentially new about that". [8]
Israel's positions have not been accepted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, nor has it been endorsed by the other High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Article 1 of the Convention states that "The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances" (emphasis added). [9] [10]
On 15 July 1999 a conference of the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention met at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva. It ruled that the Convention did apply in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem. [11] In 2001, at a one-day conference of High Contracting Parties, 114 countries adopted a three-page declaration re-affirming that the terms of the Convention applied to the Palestinian territories. [12]
In August 2004 an Israeli justice ministry team set up by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to study the ramifications of a ruling by the World Court [13] recommended that the Israeli government should consider applying the Fourth Geneva Convention to the West Bank and Gaza. [14]
Israel argues that it is not in violation of it. Firstly, Israel argues that the article was created in the context of World War II only.
Secondly, it is only intended to cover forcible transfers and to protect the local population from displacement. Article 49(1)of the Convention specifically covers "[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers" whereas the Israelis who live in the settlements have moved there voluntarily, and argue that settlements are not intended to, nor have ever resulted in, the displacement of Palestinians from the area. However, Article 49(6) also prohibits Israel to 'transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies', which would cover the Israeli settlements. [15] [16] [17]
Thirdly, Israel claims that some of the settlers have returned to areas where Jewish settlements existed before 1948 (such as Gush Etzion) and therefore it is an entirely different issue.
Fourthly, Israel claims that the Geneva Convention only applies in the absence of an operative peace agreement and between two powers accepting the convention. Since the Oslo Accords leave the issue of settlements to be negotiated later, proponents of this view argue that the Palestinians accepted the temporary presence of Israeli settlements pending further negotiation, and that there is no basis for declaring them illegal. [16] [18]
Israel left the Gaza Strip in September 2005, and removed all of the settlements and military forces that were in it. Parts of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights remain under control of Israel as of today. Israel remains in control of Gaza's airspace and territorial waters. It has not controlled the Rafah crossing into Egypt since the unilateral disengagement plan of 2005 took effect.
Israeli settlements or colonies are civilian communities where Israeli citizens live, almost exclusively of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. The international community consider Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
The West Bank is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean in the Levant region of Western Asia that forms the main bulk of the Palestinian territories. It is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel to the south, west, and north. It has been under an Israeli military occupation since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Since the Oslo II Accord was signed in 1995, its area has been split into 165 Palestinian enclaves, that are under total or partial civil administration by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and a contiguous area containing 230 Israeli settlements into which Israeli law is "pipelined". The West Bank includes East Jerusalem. Israel administers the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem as the Judea and Samaria Area district, through the Israeli Civil Administration.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (S/RES/242) was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 22, 1967, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. It was adopted under Chapter VI of the UN Charter. The resolution was sponsored by British ambassador Lord Caradon and was one of five drafts under consideration.
The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as "the Occupied Palestinian Territory", and this term was used as the legal definition by the ICJ in its advisory opinion of July 2004. The term occupied Palestinian territory was used by the United Nations and other international organizations between October 1999 and December 2012 to refer to areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, but from 2012, when Palestine was admitted as one of its non-member observer states, the United Nations started using exclusively the name State of Palestine. The European Union (EU) also adopts the term occupied Palestinian territory, with a parallel term Palestinian Authority territories also occasionally used. The government of Israel and its supporters use the label "disputed territories" instead.
The International law bearing on issues of Arab–Israeli conflict, which became a major arena of regional and international tension since the birth of Israel in 1948, resulting in several disputes between a number of Arab countries and Israel.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 452, adopted on 20 July 1979, addressed the issue of the Israeli settlements in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, specifically the illegality thereof. It states that "the policy of Israel in establishing settlements in the occupied Arab territories has no legal validity and constitutes a violation of the [Fourth] Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949" and "calls upon the Government and people of Israel to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem."
United Nations Security Council Resolution 471, adopted on 5 June 1980 under Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter was on the issue of the Israeli occupation and settlement activity in the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.
Israeli-occupied territories are the lands that were captured and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. While the term is currently applied to the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, it has also been used to refer to areas that were formerly occupied by Israel, namely the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon. Prior to Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, governance of the Palestinian territories was split between Egypt and Jordan, with the former having occupied the Gaza Strip and the latter having annexed the West Bank; the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights were under the sovereignty of Egypt and Syria, respectively. The first conjoined usage of the terms "occupied" and "territories" with regard to Israel was in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was drafted in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and called for: "the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" to be achieved by "the application of both the following principles: ... Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict ... Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
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Demographic features of the population of the area commonly described as Palestinian territories includes information on ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of that population.
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The Israeli Military Governorate was a military governance system established following the Six-Day War in June 1967, in order to govern the civilian population of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Western part of Golan Heights. The governance was based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides guidelines for military rule in occupied areas. East Jerusalem was the only exception from this order, and it was added to Jerusalem municipal area as early as 1967, and extending Israeli law to the area effectively annexing it in 1980. During this period, the UN and many sources referred to the military governed areas as Occupied Arab Territories.
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