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Are Israeli Settlements Illegal?

(National Post-Canada) Jason Reiskind - Canada's current position on Israeli settlements is that they are illegal because they violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the transfer of population. Yet Canada must apply Article 49 equally to all states. Canada accepted the massive Soviet settlement of Russian citizens into the Baltic territories after the Second World War and even discouraged those states from removing the settlers when they renewed their independence in the 1990s. Canada has accepted Turkey's settlement of Turkish farmers into Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, and we've been conspicuously silent on the vast Chinese settlement of occupied Tibet. At the very least, we can no longer state that Article 49 applies to Jews living in and moving to the ancient Hebrew city of Hebron or the ancient Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. Jews lived in Hebron for thousands of years and the founders of Judaism are buried there. In 1929, a genocide occurred when the entire Jewish population was attacked and either killed or scattered. For Canada now to take the position that Jews cannot live in Hebron is to legitimize the 1929 genocide. Likewise, Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem over much of two millennia. Jordan, on conquering the Old City in 1948 shortly after Israel declared its independence, killed or displaced every single Jew. The writer, a specialist in international law formerly at the department of External Affairs (now Global Affairs Canada), was a Foreign Service officer and Justice Canada counsel.
2017-02-02 00:00:00
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