The Meaning of Occupation

We hear a lot about “the Occupation” these days. There’s no need to say which.

“The time has come to end our community’s support for the Occupation,” begins a press release of the Jewish organization IfNotNow, which has been pressuring Democratic presidential candidates to demand an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria or—for those who prefer not to use those names even though they are the traditional ones in both Jewish sources and most of the languages of Europe—the “Palestinian territories” or “the West Bank” of the Jordan River. The framers of IfNotNow’s communiqué didn’t bother to be more specific. They assumed everyone knows who’s occupying whom.

As a term in international law, “occupation” goes back to the end of the 19th century, when it was introduced to do away with the older concept of the right of conquest, which recognized a victorious country’s right to retain conquered territory in perpetuity. Article 42 of the 1899 Hague Convention states: