JERUSALEM, May 17, 01 (CWNews.com) - The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Israel said on Thursday Jewish settlements in occupied territories could be considered war crimes.
Rene Kosirnik said, "The policy of settlement as such in humanitarian law is a war crime." He said the Geneva Convention forbid resettling a population in occupied territories like the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem, as designated by the United Nations.
"The transfer, the installation of population of the occupying power into the occupied territories is considered as an illegal move and qualified as a 'grave breach'. It's a grave breach, formally speaking, but grave breaches are equal in principle to war crimes," Kosirnik said.
Parts of the West Bank and Gaza have been handed over to Palestinian rule since interim peace deals were implemented starting in 1994. Under the peace accords, the fate of Jewish settlements will be resolved in negotiations for a final treaty.
Meanwhile, Kosirnik said he hoped a solution could be found to a dispute over national emblems blocking Israel's admission to the international Red Cross movement. Israel's humanitarian relief movement, Magen David Adom, uses a Red Star of David and has therefore been barred from the Red Cross movement which currently recognizes only the Red Cross and Red Crescent symbols. He said there was an effort being made to adopt a neutral alternative without the religious connotation that a cross has for Christianity or a crescent for Islam.
Catholic World News Service - Daily News Briefs
17. mai 2001