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08/24/2004:

"Israel Urged to Change Stand on Geneva Convention"

Reuters
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hoping to avoid sanctions, Israel's attorney general wants Israel to consider applying to Palestinians the Fourth Geneva Convention safeguarding the treatment of occupied people, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

It was another sign of emerging Israeli disquiet about the risk of international sanctions following a World Court decision in July that declared illegal its West Bank barrier built across Palestinian farmland.

Israel has said previously the Geneva Convention's clauses on occupation do not apply to it because Jordanian and Egyptian control over the West Bank and Gaza before 1967 was not internationally recognized.

Some 3.6 million Palestinians live in the two territories which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel says it does its best to heed humanitarian standards in Palestinian areas but Palestinians dispute this, pointing to Jewish settlements, roadblocks and other Israeli controls.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last week urged the right-wing government to reroute its barrier swiftly to minimize the risk of sanctions, and the High Court gave it 30 days to issue a statement on the ramifications of the World Court decision.

A Justice Ministry spokesman said Mazuz now wanted the government to ``deeply consider'' the possibility of adopting the 1949 Convention, which forbids abuses of civilians in conflict zones and transferring citizens of an occupying power onto captured territory. full article