Israel urged to change stand on Geneva Convention

1.00pm - By MARK HEINRICH

JERUSALEM - Hoping to avoid sanctions, Israel's attorney-general wants his country to consider applying to Palestinians the Fourth Geneva Convention safeguarding the treatment of occupied people, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

It was another sign of emerging Israeli disquiet about the risk of international sanctions following a World Court decision in July that declared illegal its West Bank barrier built across Palestinian farmland.

Israel has said previously the Geneva Convention's clauses on occupation do not apply to it because Jordanian and Egyptian control over the West Bank and Gaza before 1967 was not internationally recognised.

Some 3.6 million Palestinians live in the two territories which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel says it does its best to heed humanitarian standards in Palestinian areas but Palestinians dispute this, pointing to Jewish settlements, roadblocks and other Israeli controls.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last week urged the right-wing government to reroute its barrier swiftly to minimise the risk of sanctions, and the High Court gave it 30 days to issue a statement on the ramifications of the World Court decision.

A Justice Ministry spokesman said Mazuz now wanted the government to "deeply consider" the possibility of adopting the 1949 Convention, which forbids abuses of civilians in conflict zones and transferring citizens of an occupying power onto captured territory.

However, Israel is seen as unlikely to embrace the Convention in the near term as this could be tantamount to recognising that its Jewish settlement enterprise is illegal.

A senior security source criticised the opinion. "We have not changed our diplomatic or political point of view. If Israel were to adopt the convention in its own context, it would tie the military's hands in fighting terrorism," he said.

However, a senior political source said Mazuz's stance reflected Israeli concerns "about repercussions from the World Court decision because of the effect on international public opinion".

Israel says the planned 600km-long barrier, of which some 200km have been built, is aimed at stopping Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching its cities.

Palestinians, who launched an uprising in 2000, denounce the project as a precursor to annexing territory, which could thwart their aspirations to a viable state promised by a troubled US-backed peace plan.

Significant sections of the barrier charted so far would take in a string of Israeli settlements containing most of the 240,000 Jews who have moved into the West Bank and Gaza since the 1967 Middle East war.

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, reacting to Israel's own High Court, this week approved a new path for a segment of the barrier which would fence off less than half the 3440ha affected by its original course.

The court had ordered the government not to separate West Bank Palestinians from their livelihoods, schools and hospitals.

In fresh violence in Gaza, Israeli soldiers shot dead a 20-year-old farmer on Tuesday, medics said. A military source said soldiers had opened fire to thwart a bombing near a crossing with Israel.

In Israeli prisons, a Palestinian hunger strike for better conditions went through its 10th day and Israel declared its hospitals off-limits to any of the 2800 inmates on the liquids-only fast who might fall ill.

Despite the tensions, the Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers made plans to hold a rare meeting on Thursday at an Italian interfaith conference, sources in Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's office said.

- REUTERS