Global Research

Israelis are governed by civil law. Palestinians suffer under the oppressive yoke of unlawful militarized rule – their fundamental rights denied.

Military order 1797 is the latest example of extremist Israeli policy – apartheid ruthlessness by any standard, unrestrained because of full US support.

The world community, including the UN, has done nothing over many decades to challenge what no just societies tolerate.

International law is a nonstarter in Israel, repeatedly breached with impunity, accountability never forthcoming. Slow-motion genocide of an entire population continues unimpeded – notably in Gaza.

There’s no ambiguity about fundamental international law – binding on all nations, overriding their domestic laws, in America automatically US law under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article 6, Clause 2) – for treaties and conventions it signed.

Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court bans “(d)eportation or forcible transfer of (a) population.”

Fourth Geneva’s Article 49 prohibits the forcible transfer or displacement of protected persons – nor may occupying powers legally shift any portion of their own population to territory they occupy.

The Nuremberg International Military Tribunal said forcible deportation of a population constitutes a war crime.

Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations requires an occupying power to respect and observe laws of the territory it occupies.

Israeli Military Order (MO) 1797 is all about unlawful ethnic cleansing. Established under Oslo II (1995), West Bank Area C comprises over 60% of the territory – controlled by Israel, the most valued occupied land along with East Jerusalem.

The MO more greatly empowers Israel’s Civil Administration to order demolitions of Palestinian homes and other structures – without the right of a hearing or appeal, excluding judicial authority to overrule what’s ordered.

Any Palestinian structure completed in the last six months, under construction, or inhabited for less than 30 days can be demolished within four days by order of a Civil Administration inspector – without near-impossible to get permit authorization to build.

The MO applies solely to Palestinians, not settlers. It’s all about slow-motion (extrajudicial) ethnic cleansing.

Israel wants all valued West Bank land annexed, the so-called “Green Line” erased, intolerant of a two-state solution it rejects – despite phony public posturing otherwise.

On Tuesday, the PA foreign ministry said Israel’s ethnic cleansing plan “imperils any opportunity for achieving peace based on the two-state solution; which is done through the continuous settlements expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in the borders alongside the Green Line, Jerusalem, and the Jordan Valley, in addition to the series of decisions and measures that facilitate the imposition of Israeli law in Area C in order to annex it.”

Extremist Israeli minister Naftali Bennett explained it, saying

“(t)he West Bank and all the settlements around it will soon become part of Israel.”

Commenting on his statement, the PA foreign ministry said:

“These statements are translated on the ground through their extraordinary measures, the latest of which is the Military Order 1797 which expands the powers granted to the so-called Civil Administration in demolishing Palestinians facilities, and evacuating area C from its Palestinians citizens,” adding:

“(T)he long series of colonial measures are continuously escalating for the purpose of Palestinian lands theft.”

“The latest notices were distributed by the Israeli occupation authorities yesterday to raze more than 29 dunums in the Jordan Valley, and the Israeli occupation forces handed over the order to seize more than 24 dunums in the villages of Yetma, Qabla and Qablan under military pretexts.”

“(S)eizing large areas of Beit Surik in order to expand the settlement of Mevaseret Zion will create a situation of urban colonial expansions at the expense of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the rights of its citizens.”

“The Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu bears full and direct responsibility for these ongoing crimes and their consequences and prospects for peace and its sequences on the future of security and stability in the region.”

“The US administration also (is) directly responsibl(e) for the outcomes of its blind bias towards the occupation and its expansionist colonial policies.”

“The Ministry expresses its deep astonishment regarding the international community’s silence that claim their interest in the two state solution.”

“Israel is not held accountable and punished for its crimes which encourages the occupation to continue implementing its colonialist expansionist plans.”

MO 1797 is the latest Israeli ethnic cleansing action, part of its longterm plan for maximum Jews and minimum Arabs, systematically stealing historic Palestine – an unlawful agenda in flagrant violation of fundamental international law.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.