Gershom Gorenberg
On June 19, 1967, a week after the Six-Day War, the Israeli cabinet met to discuss the future of the territories that Israel had just occupied. One proposal was to permanently keep the West Bank and give its Palestinian residents local autonomy—but not citizenship. Justice Minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapira responded that in “an era of decolonization,” the idea was absurd.
“Every progressive person will rise against us and say … ‘They want to turn the West Bank, inhabited by Arabs, into a colony,’” he said.
Three months later, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was preparing to green-light the first Israeli settlement in the West Bank. A top aide checked with the Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser, Theodor Meron, about the legality of the move.
“My conclusion,” Meron answered in a top-secret memo, “is that civilian settlement in the administered [occupied] territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” In other words, it was illegal.
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