Tuesday 18 November 2008









Monday, 17th November 2008

Another banana moment?

11:25pm


With his remarks about the Israeli settlements, Foreign Secretary David Miliband (pictured eating an ice-cream in Damascus) has signalled a sharp deterioration in relations between Britain and Israel. Miliband has urged enforcement of an EU boycott of produce from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, settlements he has called ‘illegal’.

I asked the Foreign Office for the legal basis of its opinion that the settlements were illegal. It replied that it was the Geneva Convention, which forbade the movement of a population into occupied territory. I asked whether it was basing this on a ruling by any particular body or whether this was merely its own reading of the Geneva Convention. Oh, everyone accepts this is what the Geneva Convention means, came the breezy reply. I then asked what was its legal definition of the ‘occupied territories’. ‘As...

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