Israeli Military Defends Actions in Occupied Areas

JERUSALEM — Accused repeatedly of brutal violations of human rights on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Israeli military on Wednesday defended its actions in countering the Palestinian intifada, the 5 1/2-year-old rebellion against the occupation there, as fully within international law.

Col. David Yahav, the Israel Defense Forces’ deputy advocate general, asserted that many of the army’s most criticized actions--detention without trial, deportations, demolition of houses, lengthy curfews, censorship and seizure of land--are permitted under international treaties.

Palestinians actually have more rights than before the 1967 war, and far more than other people under military occupation, Yahav declared, because of their access to Israeli courts, judicial review for major decisions on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and “a spirit of due process.”

Introducing a 250-page book in response to the widespread domestic and international criticism of the Israeli military’s efforts to cope with the intifada, Yahav contended that the army had succeeded in operating within “the rule of law” despite danger and difficulty.

In the end, however, Yahav and Capt. Uzi Amit-Kohn, who helped write the book, said “the doctrine of military necessity” was the basis of virtually all Israeli actions and that the limits on the army’s use of force are just those of “reasonableness” and “proportionality.”

“We are entitled to use what measures are required to restore public order and security in the territories,” Yahav said, justifying the demolition of the homes of Palestinians suspected of security offenses and the destruction of houses during the search for wanted persons.

But Yahav and Amit-Kohn had trouble explaining how Israel could apply international conventions, such as the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on protecting civilians in wartime, to assert its authority even as it refuses to accept obligations under those treaties.

They also found it difficult at a 90-minute, sometimes-raucous press conference to explain how Israel could declare itself an occupying power, thus claiming certain rights under international law, but then deny that any country had sovereignty in the two regions.

“The Israeli government maintains that the Fourth Geneva Convention (on civilian protection) does not apply de jure, but we are willing to apply its humanitarian provisions de facto, “ Amit-Kohn said. “That may seem contradictory, but it has been our position since 1967.”

Defending Israel’s expulsion of 413 suspected Islamic fundamentalists to southern Lebanon last December, a move condemned even by Israel’s closest friends, Yahav declared, “We have our own interpretation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (barring deportation) . . . others may have theirs.”

The point of the effort, however, appeared to be to reassure all Israelis, including the military, that their 26-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been as benign as an occupation can be.

Fully a third of the petitions submitted to Israel’s Supreme Court now come from Palestinians and human rights organizations appealing the military’s action in the occupied territories, Yahav said.

But human rights organizations, among the military’s sharpest critics, immediately took issue with the presentation.

Joshua Schoffman, legal director of the Assn. for Civil Rights in Israel, noted that many Israeli actions are based on old British emergency regulations that Jewish leaders had denounced before Israel became a nation.

Eric Goldstein, research director of Middle East Watch in New York, argued that Israel’s expulsion of the suspected Islamic activists in December alone was a massive breach of human rights--and that the Israeli courts refused to order the government to reverse the action and bring all the men home.

The report, he said, failed to show that “the rule of law, in the true meaning of the phrase, obtains on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

And Fatah Azzam, program director of the Palestinian legal center Al Haq in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said the military’s report was merely “an attempt to put a legal face on what has been the practice for years.”