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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| State Dept. no longer using phrase 'occupied territories' for Golan, West Bank, Gaza |
| 2019-03-14 |
| [Jpost] The US State Department has erased the word "occupation" from its description of the Golan Heights and the Paleostinian territories in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which it published on Wednesday. Last year, it referred to the areas as "occupied" by Israel; now, it speaks of them as under Israeli "control." The change began gradually two years ago, when the State Department replaced the country designation of "Israel and the occupied territories" with "Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank and Gazoo." Within the 2017 report itself, however, the State Department last year still used the word "occupation" but much more sparingly. In 2016, the report referred to the occupied territories, and in 2017 it spoke of the Paleostinian territories. This year, the 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices made no mention of the word "occupation" at all. At a Wednesday State Department presser in Washington about the report, Michael Kozak from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor downplayed the move. "My understanding is that there is no change in our outlook or our policy vis-à-vis the territories and the need for a negotiated settlement there," Kozak said. A news hound pressed him on the point: "You no longer consider the West Bank to be occupied?" "No. I said that our policy on the status has not changed. That is my understanding. We decided not to use the term in the reports because it is not a human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... term and it was distracting," Kozak said. The linguistic change was made by the regional bureau of the Office of the Legal Adviser, Kozak said. "What we’re trying to do is report on the human rights situation in those territories.... You’re just trying to find a way of describing the place that you are reporting on. ’Occupied territory’ has a legal meaning to it. What they tried to do was shift more to just a geographic description. So we said Israel, Golan, West Bank, Gazoo and Jerusalem." "It’s a complicated report because there are sometimes multiple authorities who have authority over people in particular parts of that territory. So it’s a very complicated one to write," Kozak said. Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, director of international law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum said, "This is a massive change in how America relates to the conflict. It is coming to understand that while Israel and the Paleostinians have a dispute, international law does not provide the answers to that dispute. The report, also for the first time, expresses skepticism at the claims and submissions of anti-Israel groups, whose poorly documented allegations have previously been accepted as gospel." |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #3 State Department |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-03-14 09:48 |
| #2 Haven't been using the term in reference to Prussia or Silesia for over 50 years. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-03-14 07:59 |
| #1 It all belongs to Israel. |
| Posted by: newc 2019-03-14 01:32 |