Op-Ed: The West Bank is under military occupation, and that’s a fact
*(Jessica Montell is executive director of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — According to press reports, the crowd at a recent Republican Jewish Coalition conference “noticeably gasped” when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie referred to the West Bank as “occupied territories.” Christie promptly apologized to the event’s host, mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, clarifying that his remarks “were not meant to be a statement of policy,” a source said.
This incident illustrates the many semantic land mines involved in talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The terms employed to talk about the separation barrier or the Israeli settlements or some of Jerusalem’s holy sites often belie a political agenda intended not only to describe reality but also to affect it.
Yet this incident also illustrates the way in which an inherently legal term has been branded as somehow part of a radical political agenda.
Acknowledging that the West Bank is presently subject to military occupation is not at all a statement of policy. It is a statement of fact.
Read more: http://www.jta.org/2014/04/08/news-opinion/opinion/op-ed-the-west-bank-is-under-military-occupation-and-thats-a-fact#ixzz2yUF6u5yW
