Settlements and International Law
Settlement Report | Vol. 12 No. 7 | March 2002
UN Security Council Resolution 465 of 1980
5. Determines that all measures taken by Israel to change the physical
character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status
of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967,
including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and
that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population
and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation
of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian
Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to
achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory states
that "the Occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own
civilian population into the territory it occupies".
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) defines
"the transfer directly or indirectly by the Occupying power of parts of
its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" as a War
Crime indictable by the International Criminal Court.
