Sergei Snegov: Israel declares war on Palestine

The situation in the Middle East has extremely exacerbated. The Jerusalem Post newspaper reports that Israel has formally changed the status of its relationships with Palestine from “peaceful coexistence” to “armed conflict.” If it proves true, Israel, in accordance with the Geneva convention, is now entitled to conduct full-fledged military operations on the territory of Palestine, take captives, create filtration and prisoner-of-war camps where people might be held until the end of hostilities. Moreover, Israel thereby relieves itself of the responsibility for the damage inflicted to Palestine as a result of military operations as well as neutralizes any pressure the world community might put on it. So, the armed conflict takes on a legal shape, and no country may now lay claims to Israel in this respect. At least, Israel will never be pilloried as Russia has always been for the way it treats its Chechen problem. Pravda.ru has repeatedly drawn its readers’ attention to the fact that Russia’s failure to solve the Chechen problem is largely due to the legal uncertainty of the hostilities in this breakaway republic, and a “contra-terrorist operation” has never been the right term to designate what it is all about. But if an “internal armed conflict” is declared, Russia will be entitled to create filtration and prisoner-of-war camps. Captured rebels would not then move about on the “freed territories,” but be duly held behind barbed wire under the protection of the Red Cross.