Anti-Israel ‘Double Standard’ at the UN: Why No Condemnation of Other Occupations and Settlements?

The United Nations’ response to various situations of occupation and settlements around the world is extraordinarily uneven, with Israel virtually alone in the world body’s crosshairs, a comprehensive new research study shows.

 

An examination of seven other prolonged occupations arising during armed conflict – ranging from Turkey in northern Cyprus to Russia in Crimea – finds that in no other case is the country concerned formally described in U.N. General Assembly resolutions as an “Occupying Power.”

 

Israel, however, is referred to as an “Occupying Power” no fewer than 530 times in General Assembly resolutions, according to the study carried out by Eugene Kontorovich, professor of international law at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.

 

Kontorovich, who is also director of the Kohelet Policy Forum, an Israeli think tank, studied all prolonged occupations that involved the movement of civilian population into territory occupied in conflict since the adoption of the Geneva Conventions – as well as the rhetoric and legal concepts used by the U.N. in relation to them.

 

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