Secret memo damns Israeli claim of legal occupation

Judge Meron was reported to have said: "It’s obvious to me that the fact that settlements were established and the pace of the establishment of the settlements made peacemaking much more difficult."

clipped from www.themuslimweekly.com A secret warning to the government of Israel after the 1967 Six Day War by a senior legal official over the illegality of building Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories said he still believes he was right. Theodor Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser at the time, declaration smacks in the face of Israel’s persistent claim that the settlements are not in violation of UN resolutions. The copy of the legal opinion, obtained by The Independent, marked "Top Secret" and "Extremely Urgent", said in the words of its author’s summary "that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." Judge Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia until 2005, said that, after 40 years of Jewish settlement growth in the West Bank, he "would have given the same opinion today".