Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

U.N.: Settlements Violate Geneva Conventions

A United Nations investigation into the impact of Jewish West Bank settlements on the Palestinian population said that Israel should immediately begin to withdraw all settlers from the territory.

The report issued Thursday by the U.N. Human Rights Council based in Geneva said that settlement violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions and that failure to withdraw could lead to a finding of war crimes at the International Criminal Court.

The Palestinians have threatened to take Israel to the ICC since the Palestinian Authority was recognized as having non-member state status in the General Assembly in November.

The Human Rights Council’s investigation began last March. Israel did not cooperate with the investigation, including barring investigators from entering the territory, saying that the council is biased against the Jewish state. The council has issued more resolutions regarding Israeli human rights violations than any country.

The report said that Israel “must, in compliance with article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, cease all settlement activities without preconditions. It must immediately initiate a process of withdrawal of all settlers from the OPT,” or Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Investigators interviewed about 50 Palestinians in Jordan in order to prepare the report. The report said that the Palestinians were prevented by the settlements from reaching their farming lands and water resources.

The report estimated that 520,000 settlers live in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem in some 250 settlements.

This, according to the report, “prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the report, calling it “counterproductive.” The report “will only hamper efforts to find a sustainable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The only way to resolve all pending issues between Israel and the Palestinians, including the settlements issue, is through direct negotiations without pre-conditions,” the ministry said. .

“The Human Rights Council has sadly distinguished itself by its systematical, one-sided and biased approach towards Israel. This latest report is yet another unfortunate reminder of such approach,” the ministry concluded.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.