News

Israel
argued this week that a major human rights treaty, the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, did not apply to its treatment
of
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, because those areas were outside
the
country’s national boundaries, even as it defended its record on that
score
before the covenant’s monitoring body in Geneva.

According to a
press
release put out on Wednesday by the UN Human Rights Committee, which
held its
periodic review of Israel’s compliance with that convention this week,
Israel’s
deputy attorney-general Malkiel Blass stated that his country believed
the
“convention, which was a territorially bound convention, did not apply,
nor was
it intended to apply, to areas outside its national territory.”

During
nine hours of testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Israeli delegation
added
that Israel had limited government authority in the West Bank and the
Gaza
Strip, and therefore was not in a position to “enforce the rights under
the
Covenant in those areas.”

The delegation said that “Israel did not
control these territories and thus could not enforce the rights under
the
Convention in these areas.”

It said, however, that “the rules ... >>>