The president of the United States, Donald Trump, said he wants to resettle the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip to Egypt and Jordan, demolish remaining buildings to give way to a Riviera style development project and place the territory occupied under the “property “From the United States.
Forcing people to leave their land and take over the territory is prohibited by long -standing treaties. Below is the ramifications of Trump’s plans under international law.
Taking control of the territory
Trump said: “The United States will take over the Gaza Strip and we will also do a job with him … I see a long -term property position.”
The Gaza Strip is recognized by the United Nations and its highest court, the International Court of Justice, as part of the Palestinian territories under Israeli military occupation.
International law prohibits the seizure of the territory by force, which is defined as an act of aggression. The UN Charter says: “All members will refrain in their international relations of the threat or use of force against territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
“Ultimately, President Trump’s proposal is equivalent to a shameless rejection of the basic principles of international law that have operated since the end of World War II and the adoption of the UN Chart of International Human Rights Law Michael Becker in Trinity College, Dublin.
If the United States claimed to the Gaza Strip, “this would be equivalent to the illegal annexation of territory. Israel does not have the right to give Palestinian territory to the United States or any other person, ”said Becker.
Janina Dill, co -director of the Institute of Ethics, Law and Armed Conflicts of Oxford and a specialist in International Humanitarian Law, said: “There are no circumstances in which it is allowed to take territory by force. The argument that benefits populations there or otherwise makes no sense, even if it was in fact correct. ”
According to the UN letter, the responsibility of identifying acts of aggression and responding to them falls before the Security Council, where the United States is a permanent member that carries the veto.
The aggression is also one of the crimes that can be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court. The United States and Israel are not members of the ICC, but the court has affirmed the jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories, including acts committed there by countries that are not members.
Moving the Palestinians
“The resettlement of force to the Palestinians of Gaza would constitute the crime against humanity of deportation or forced transfer,” Dill said.
Trump has said that Gaza’s Palestinian residents would like to leave because he has become dangerous. But so far there have been indications that the 2.3 million residents want to go.
The fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits the transfer or forced deportation of protected people in occupied territory.
According to the Founding Document of the International Criminal Court, the Statute of Rome, “the term” by force “is not restricted to physical force, but may include the threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence , coercion, detention, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power against said person or other people, or taking advantage of a coercive environment. “
Dill said it was also likely that eliminating the Palestinians of Gaza requires other crimes on a large scale against them.
“The scale of such a company, the required level of coercion and force means that this would probably comply with the threshold of a large scale and a systematic attack against the civilian population.”
Prevent the gazans from returning
Trump has said that after Gaza’s residents leave, he doesn’t imagine returning.
Picking that they do it would also be equivalent to a violation of international legal principles under which displaced populations retain the right to return to the lands that have fled.
Even legal evacuation by an occupation power “cannot involve sending people to a third country and cannot be a pretext for ethnic cleaning or eliminating the population from the territory indefinitely or permanently,” Becker said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres To Arabiya TV that getting the population of Gaza “would create a high risk that the Palestinian State is impossible forever.”
