International Law Israel Israeli settlements

DOING BUSINESS WITH ISRAELI BUSINESSES IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA IS LEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW…….

 

Facts crush memes every time.

A word of note, Prof.Kontorovich is not stating that the Israeli presence within Judea and Samaria are illegal, but proving the case, from a devil’s advocate position, that even if they were illegal (which they’re not), international commercial interaction with it would not be illegal under international law.

Israeli Settlements

Europeans cruise to occupied territory

September 22

Apparently Europeans do no take their governments’ warnings about doing business in occupied territories too seriously. A German-owned,Portuguese-flagged, Greek-based cruise ship, the Ocean Majesty, paid a port call to Yalta this week, in Russian-occupied Crimea. The 500 mostly German tourists had a nice day of sightseeing, to the outrage of Ukraine, which has passed a law banning such activities.

(The incident seems to be part of a pattern of German businesses beingvisibly active in Crimea.)

But as I show in my new paper, Economic Dealings With Occupied Territories (currently making the rounds among law review), international law does not ban economic activity with illegally annexed or administered territories. European government suggestions that “economic activities (including services like tourism) entail [international] legal and economic risks” are not backed by actual law, and the German cruise operators know it. Alternately, they may know that if it is thought to be illegal, it is only in one specific context.

Certainly tourism and real estate in Turkish settlements in Occupied Cypriot Territory are heavily geared to European nationals in particular, as suggested by this photo of illegal settlement construction that somehow has not drawn the much international ire. (The photos are by Wilson Shirley, an undergraduate at Northwestern University who conducted research there this summer.)

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