The Associated Press has reported that President Trump “suggested that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and proposed the U.S. take ‘ownership’ in redeveloping the area into ‘the Riviera of the Middle East.’”
ALFRED DE ZAYAS, @AlfreddeZayas
Alfred de Zayas is a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order from 2012-2018. He is the author of 10 books including Building a Just World Order.
Zayas said today: “The most relevant ‘hard law’ [regarding permanent ‘resettlement’ and displacement] is the Statute of Rome, articles 7 and 8, which specifically criminalize forced population transfers and, of course, article 49 of the 1949 IV Geneva Red Cross Convention, which both the U.S. and Israel have ratified.”
See also his article “International Law and Mass Population Transfers,” in vol. 16 of the Harvard International Law Journal, pp. 207-258.
He cites:
Article 49 of the 1949 IV Geneva Red Cross Convention – Deportations, transfers, evacuations
Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
Zayas added: “Even if the Sub-Commission declaration of 1997 is only ‘soft law,’ it was approved and adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1998 and frequently cited by the first High Commissioner for Human Rights, José Ayala Lasso.
“The content of the declaration is reflected in the case-law of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and in General Assembly Resolutions that call ‘ethnic cleansing’ a form of genocide.”