Title
Illegal Occupation: Framing the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Abstract
Abstract: Illegal Occupation: the Framing of the Occupied Palestinian Territory
The article expands the international legal discourse on belligerent occupation by analyzing the nature of the normative regime of occupation, as distinct from the traditional focus on the legality of specific actions undertaken within it. Focusing on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory, the article argues that this occupation has become illegal both intrinsically (i.e., in terms of the fundamental principles comprising the normative regime of occupation) and extrinsically (i.e., in terms of the international legal order which generates this normative regime as an exception to the normal order of sovereign equality between states).
The intrinsic legality of an occupation is measured in relation to its three interrelated basic tenets: (a) Sovereignty and title in an occupied territory is not vested in the occupying power; in view of the principle of self-determination, it is vested in the occupied population; (b) The occupying power is entrusted with the management of public order and civil life in the occupied territory. In view of the principle of self-determination, the people under occupation are the beneficiaries of this trust. Their dispossession and subjugation is thus a violation of this trust; and (c) The occupation is temporary. It is neither permanent nor indefinite. The extrinsic legality of an occupation is to be measured by its exceptionality. Once the boundaries between the exception and the rule (as well as between occupation/ non occupation'; annexation/ non annexation; temporary/ indefinite) are blurred, the occupation becomes illegal. This is the nature of the Israeli occupation.
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