World Experts Condemn Israel’s Planned Transfer of Bedouin as Potential War Crime and Invoke Authority of International Criminal Court
Jericho, occupied Palestine, 22 January 2015: Leading experts in international law, anthropology and planning have condemned Israel’s threatened forced transfer of thousands of Bedouin in the occupied West Bank as a violation of international humanitarian law and a potential “war crime”. They called for the prosecution of those Israeli officials who would be responsible. The transfer plan would force Bedouin out of areas ear-marked for Israeli settlements.
Speaking at a symposium of experts in Jericho near Jerusalem, Marco Sassoli, Professor of International Law at the University of Geneva said: “The forcible transfer of a person within occupied territory is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel has to stop it. All states have an obligation to ensure respect for that prohibition. Forcible transfer within an occupied territory also constitutes a war crime. Israel and all other State Parties to the Convention must prosecute persons suspected of such a crime. In line with the recent statement of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), considering Palestine as a State party to the Statute of the ICC, she may bring persons suspected of such a crime before the ICC, if the Israeli justice system tolerates forcible transfers.”
Israel has announced plans to relocate as many as 12,500 Bedouin to a centralised township near Jericho, called Nweima, one of several sites proposed by the Israeli authorities for the relocation of some 30,000 pastoralist Bedouin people. The plan has sparked international concern for the plight of the Bedouin and condemnation from world leaders.
Dawn Chatty, Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration at Oxford University, condemned the planned relocation as a form of cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing, arguing that “the Israeli transfer plan in the West Bank threatens the Bedouins’ need for mobility and user rights over extensive but low quality natural resources such as grazing lands. The plan could be seen as cultural genocide of the Bedouin way of life in the West Bank. The sweeping nature of the forced eviction is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.”
The experts called on Israel to cease all measures and plans that lead to the transfer, displacement and further dispossession of the Bedouin; to put in place policies and practices that support the welfare of the Bedouin communities, which is the obligation of an “occupying power”; and to stop the construction and expansion of settlements and the Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Abu Suleiman, speaking on behalf of the Bedouin Protection Committee in the West Bank told the meeting that, “the Bedouin totally reject this plan which will have an unbearable human impact on our families. Women, children, the elderly, some of the most vulnerable people in the Middle East will suffer intolerably. What we are facing is the elimination of the traditional way of life of an entire indigenous population. The transfer plan must be abandoned.”
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