title: Redmond, Washington

text: The median age in the city was 34.1 years. 22.7% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.5% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 38.7% were from 25 to 44; 21.6% were from 45 to 64; and 9.5% were 65 years of age or older. The sex ratio of the city was 50.9% male and 49.1% female.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 45,256 people, 19,102 households, and 11,346 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,848.8 people per square mile (1,099.7/km). There were 20,248 housing units at an average density of 1,274.6 per square mile (492.0/km). The racial makeup of the city was 79.3% White, 13.0% Asian, 1.5% African American, 0.5% Native American, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 2.5% from other races, and 3.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 5.6% of the population.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: There were 19,102 households, out of which 28.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.9% were married couples living together, 7.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.6% were non-families. 30.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.95.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: In the city, the population was spread out, with 21.5% under the age of 18, 9.5% from 18 to 24, 37.9% from 25 to 44, 21.9% from 45 to 64, and 9.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 100.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 99.5 males.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: The median income for a household in the city was $66,735, and the median income for a family was $78,430. Males had a median income of $58,112 versus $37,200 for females. The per capita income for the city was $36,233. About 3.3% of families and 5.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 6.3% of those under age 18 and 6.5% of those age 65 or over.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Several companies in the high-tech industry are based in Redmond. The largest employer in the city by far is Microsoft, which moved its headquarters to Redmond in 1986. Microsoft has over 40,000 blue badge FTEs (full-time employee), 45,000 orange badge contractors (as of June 2012, there are over 94,000 workers, and over half are contractors), and more than 8 million square feet (750,000 square meters) of office space in the Seattle area Eastside region, primarily in Redmond, with additional offices in Bellevue and Issaquah (90,000 employees worldwide). In June 2006, Microsoft purchased former Safeco's Redmond campus at 4515–5069 154th Place NE for $220.5 million.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Other companies with headquarters in Redmond include Nintendo of America, Genie Industries (now part of Terex), Physio-Control (now part of Stryker), Visible.net, WildTangent, Solstice (acquired by Samsung) and Data I/O.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: In 2015, SpaceX and Hyperloop Genesis announced opening of a facility in Redmond. Their focus will be R&D and manufacturing for a proposed internet communications satellite constellation and new transport systems.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Unlike Bellevue and other neighboring cities, the city of Redmond does not have a business and occupation tax on income. However, to help offset the costs of road improvements for businesses, a business license fee of $55 per employee was approved in 1996. , the fee is $107 per employee.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Redmond Derby Days is an annual community festival held the second full weekend of July and celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2015. It began as a race around Lake Sammamish called the Redmond Bicycle Derby in 1939, and since then has become a multi-day event including a bicycle criterium, parade, entertainment stages, beer garden, local food offerings and activities. It also includes a carnival with rides and attractions and a fireworks display at dusk on Saturday.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Performing arts in Redmond include the Eastside Symphony and the Second Story Repertory theater company, as well as artists who play at the Redmond Performing Arts Center. Redmond has a collection of outdoor sculptures throughout its streets and parks, many of which are part of a rotating sculpture exhibition.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Redmond Lights is an annual community festival held the first Saturday of December. It features a special guest each year, a tree-lighting conducted by the mayor on city hall campus, a luminary walk on the Sammamish Trail and Redmond Central Connector with musical and light stations along the way to Redmond Town Center where there are many special attractions such as a carousel, skating rink and food sampling.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: The Old Redmond Firehouse is a center for local teens. It has become a hub in the thriving Eastside independent music scene. Local bands perform here with concert style speakers.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Since 2010, by city ordinance, Redmond has appointed a poet laureate. The inaugural laureate was Rebecca Meredith (2010–2012), followed by Jeannine Hall Gailey (2012–2013), Michael Dylan Welch (2013–2015), Shin Yu Pai (2015–2017), Melanie Noel (2018–2019), Raul Sanchez (2019-2021), and Laura Da' (2022-2023).


title: Redmond, Washington

text: The Concerts at Marymoor is an annual summer series of concerts held at the amphitheater in Marymoor Park. The venue has been host to artists as diverse as Norah Jones, Peter, Paul & Mary, Rob Thomas and Duran Duran. When visiting the Seattle area, Cirque du Soleil has set up in Marymoor since the 2004 tour of Varekai when a concrete base was built for them to set up on. Since then, tours of Corteo (2006), Kooza (2010), Amaluna (2013), Kurios (2015) and Luzia (2017) have played in this spot. Marymoor also hosted the Warped Tour and Cavalia in 2012 and 2014.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Redmond Saturday Market is the oldest farmer's market in the Seattle area's east side. This market is held on Saturdays from May through October on approximately 8,000 square feet of land near the Redmond Town Center. The City of Redmond has approved an ordinance that the current market site be preserved for its community and historic significance.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: According to the city's website, Redmond has 47 public parks totaling over . Many of these are neighborhood parks with picnic tables and sports fields or courts. The largest park within the city is not owned by the city – it is King County's Marymoor Park, one of the most popular in King County. It features a climbing rock, a model airplane flying field, a 48-acre off-leash dog park, an outdoor theater, sports fields such as baseball and soccer, a playground, tennis courts, a community garden, cricket pitch, and a velodrome, which hosts the FSA Star Crossed – Redmond cyclo-cross competition in September.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: The city offers over of public trails for hiking, bicycling, and horseback riding. The Sammamish River Trail connects to the Puget Power trail, the Burke-Gilman Trail (in Bothell), and the East Lake Sammamish Trail.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: 60 Acres Park is known for its soccer in the spring through fall and RC electric airplanes and gliders in the winter time.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: In 2004, Redmond North Little League won the Northwest region and participated in the Little League World Series in South Williamsport, PA. With Redmond North claiming the Northwest, it is the third team from Washington to claim the Northwest since its inception in 2001. Previous Washington champions were Bainbridge Island (2001), Richland (2003).


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Redmond has a non-partisan mayor–council form of government, with the mayor and seven council members elected at-large for staggered four-year terms. The city council authorized a ballot measure in March 2003 that would have changed Redmond to a council-manager government. However, it was rejected by the electorate, receiving less than 30% of the vote.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Most of Redmond is part of the Lake Washington School District, which also encompasses almost all of Kirkland and parts of other surrounding communities. The public schools in Redmond include ten elementary schools, eight middle schools, and two high schools. The district also offers "choice" schools at all levels for alternative schooling needs. The city's two high schools are Redmond High School and Nikola Tesla STEM High School, a choice school.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: Three private schools in Redmond offer secondary education: The Overlake School (secular), The Bear Creek School (Christian – primary and secondary), and the Conservatory High School (for performing arts students).


title: Redmond, Washington

text: The English Hill neighborhood in North Redmond (unincorporated King County) is served by the Northshore School District and Sunrise Elementary. The far east side of Redmond is known as Redmond Ridge. Redmond Ridge and Redmond Ridge East communities are part of the Lake Washington School District. East of 248th to West Snoqualmie Valley Road is served by the Riverview School District. South of 24th Street is served by the Bellevue School District.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: DigiPen Institute of Technology and a secondary campus owned by Lake Washington Technical College is currently being leased to the City of Redmond for a Community Center are located in Redmond.


title: Redmond, Washington

text: The city is home to Redmond Regional Library, the second-largest branch in the King County Library System.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: Y: The Last Man is a post-apocalyptic science fiction comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra published by Vertigo from 2002 through 2008. The series centers on Yorick Brown and his pet Capuchin monkey Ampersand, the only males who survived the apparent global androcide. The series was published in sixty issues by Vertigo and collected in a series of ten paperback volumes (and later a series of five hardcover "Deluxe" volumes). The series' covers were primarily by J. G. Jones and Massimo Carnevale. The series received three Eisner Awards. A premiered on September 13, 2021, on FX on Hulu.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: On July 17, 2002, all living mammals with a Y chromosome—including embryos and sperm—simultaneously die, with the exception of a young amateur escape artist named Yorick Brown and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand. Many women die as a secondary effect of male deaths, such as plane crashes. Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse, and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of men, and the belief that, barring a rapid, major scientific breakthrough or other extraordinary event, humanity is doomed to extinction.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: Yorick's mother, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, commissions Agent 355 of the secret Culper Ring organization to protect Yorick. The two travel to meet geneticist and cloning expert Dr. Allison Mann, who works to discover why Yorick survived and find a way to save humankind. Due to damage at Mann's laboratory in Boston, the trio first travel across the country to Mann's other lab in San Francisco, then to Australia and Japan.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: During the trip, the group is chased by multiple parties who know of Yorick's existence and want to capture or kill him for their own purposes, including an Israeli army commando named Alter, the militant Daughters of the Amazon, and a ninja. They are aided by Yorick's sister, Hero; a Russian soldier named Natalya; an astronaut named Ciba; a former flight attendant named Beth who becomes pregnant after a one-night stand with Yorick; and Rose, an Australian sailor.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: In China, the group learns Mann's father, Dr. Matsumori, is also still alive and has created many clones of Allison Mann. He reveals to Yorick that Ampersand had been one of his lab animals he was experimenting on. He believes Ampersand had been inadvertently shielded by what killed off other Y-chromosome lifeforms as a result of one of his experiments and that this protection was transferred to Yorick via pathogens. He also reveals that Ampersand ended up in Yorick's care by accident. When Mann learns that Matsumori plans to murder Yorick before committing suicide, she kills him. Armed with the samples and information she needs, Mann stays in China to work on cloning.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: Yorick and Agent 355 journey to Paris, France, where Yorick is reunited with his ex-girlfriend, whom he wanted to marry before the die-off. After initially celebrating their reconnection, Yorick realizes he actually loves 355. After meeting up with 355, Yorick tells her how he feels and she reveals she feels the same for him. Agent 355 is killed by Alter using a sniper rifle shortly thereafter. When Alter attempts to capture Yorick, he defeats her and says he believes her dedicated pursuit of him was actually a roundabout way of suicide. He lets her live, and she is remanded into the custody of the Israelis. Yorick and Beth become a couple shortly thereafter and raise their daughter together.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: Decades later, Dr. Mann has succeeded in cloning Yorick seventeen times, along with thousands of copies of a small number of deceased males. Most of the world enjoys peace and prosperity as economic and technological development has resumed. Yorick and Beth's daughter is President of France. Yorick is institutionalized after making a joke interpreted as a suicide attempt. He is visited by one of his clones, who is the same age he was during the die-off event. After imparting advice to his clone, Yorick escapes.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: The source of the plague that wiped out every living mammal with a Y chromosome except Yorick Brown, Ampersand, and Doctor Matsumori is never fully explained. A number of possible explanations are provided throughout the course of the series, but a definitive answer is left for the reader to decide. Discussing the cause of the plague, Vaughan is quoted as saying:


title: Y: The Last Man

text: The film rights to the series were acquired by New Line Cinema (a sister company to Vertigo), and in July 2007 screenwriter Carl Ellsworth and director D. J. Caruso were attached to the project with David S. Goyer as a producer.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: Caruso intended on finishing the script in the summer and filming during the fall of 2008. The script would be a rewrite of the original draft written by Jeff Vintar. Although Vintar's draft was faithful to the original comic book, the higher-ups at New Line Cinema seemed unable to fully embrace the material. A subsequent draft by Vaughan himself, which departed from his own comic considerably, was also unsuccessful in convincing the studio to proceed.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: Caruso maintained that the source material was too much to be told in one film and his team decided to concentrate on the best first film they could, which would end somewhere around issue 14 of the comic series. The entire comic series as a whole would be plotted into three films. Actor Shia LaBeouf, who worked with the writers on the films "Disturbia" and "Eagle Eye", was considered to play the role of Yorick, but the actor considered the role too similar to the character Sam Witwicky, which he portrayed in the "Transformers" series. Caruso planned to use a real monkey, and not a CGI construct, to play Ampersand. Caruso also said he would like to have Alicia Keys for the part of Agent 355. Zachary Levi, who played the lead in the TV series "Chuck", expressed interest in playing Yorick as he is a fan of the comic book series, even going as far as having his character Chuck Bartowski read the "Y: The Last Man" graphic novel in the episode "Chuck Versus the Nacho Sampler".


title: Y: The Last Man

text: Caruso remained "loosely attached" to the project, but New Line refused to acquiesce on its development as a stand-alone movie as opposed to the trilogy Caruso preferred. Caruso, maintaining "I didn't think that you could take Yorick's story and put it in to a two-hour movie and do it justice... I just feel like it's too much for one screenplay", ultimately walked away from the project.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: In March 2012, former "Jericho" writers Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia entered final negotiations to write New Line's adaptation of the series, following in the footsteps of Vintar, Vaughan, and Ellsworth. J.C. Spink, Chris Bender and David S. Goyer were attached to produce; Mason Novick and Jake Weiner were named executive producers. Reports in September 2012 suggested New Line was enthusiastic about the draft screenplay produced by Federman and Scaia, and had begun meeting potential directors to hire for the project.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: In January 2013, it was announced that Dan Trachtenberg would direct the film. In June 2013, producer David S. Goyer announced having "a script that's as close as it's ever been," and suggested the film could go into production in 2014. However, in January 2014, Brian K. Vaughan stated, "It's my understanding that the rights to "Y: The Last Man" will revert to co-creator Pia Guerra and me for the first time in a decade if the planned New Line adaptation doesn't start shooting in the next few months." On September 24, Trachtenberg confirmed via Twitter the film was "Not happening. But it's in trusted hands (the creators)." In a subsequent interview he noted that in fact, "The rights reverted back to Brian quite a few months ago."


title: Y: The Last Man

text: In 2011, a loose adaptation of the graphic novel was made in Portugal by Luís Lobo and Bruno Telésforo as an independent short feature and school film produced by Universidade Lusófona, which was premiered in the Fantasporto film festival on contest.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: In November 2010 French director Louis Leterrier expressed interest in adapting the series for television.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: In October 2015, "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that FX was developing a TV series of "Y: The Last Man" produced by Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson alongside Brian K. Vaughan, who would also be a writer for the show. In an interview with "Vulture" in July 2016, Vaughan commented the FX series was, "very slowly coming to life. No news I can share, other than that it’s all chugging along happily."


title: Y: The Last Man

text: On April 5, 2018, FX announced it had handed out a formal pilot order and enlisted Aida Mashaka Croal to serve as co-showrunner alongside Green, with Melina Matsoukas as director.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: On July 11, 2018, FX confirmed the cast list for the lead characters in the TV pilot (titled "Y"), with Barry Keoghan as Yorick Brown, Diane Lane as Yorick's mother Senator Jennifer Brown, Olivia Thirlby as Yorick's sister Hero Brown, and Lashana Lynch as Agent 355. Production commenced on August 20, 2018, and was ordered to series on February 4, 2019. In April 2019, Green and Croal exited the series due to creative differences. In June 2019, it was announced that Eliza Clark would be replacing Croal and Green as the showrunner. In February 2020, it was reported that Barry Keoghan had exited the role of Yorrick and the character was being recast. Later that month, it was announced that Ben Schnetzer has been cast in the role of Yorick. The role of Agent 355 was also recast, with Ashley Romans replacing Lashana Lynch. The series premiered on September 13, 2021 on FX on Hulu. In October 2021, the series was canceled after one season. This was due to the fact that FX did not wish to extend the cast's contract by $3 million.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: The comic series attracted wide-spread acclaim during its publication with CBR praising it as "a series that transcends the normal restrictions of most comic books" and "Publishers Weekly" claiming that it was "entirely convincing—and addictive." "The Atlantic" called it "this wonderful, affecting, intelligent, humane story." Dan Phillips of IGN felt that "the conclusion of "Y: The Last Man" is as close to a perfect ending as you're likely to see anywhere in the history of comics."


title: Y: The Last Man

text: Later reception was more mixed, with SYFY WIRE writing that "the premise and execution are lazy, problematic" and "someone’s best imitation of what they think a feminist plot would be" and Screen Rant writing of the series' "problematic treatment of trans men" and unintentional implication that "gender identity is a matter of choice."


title: Y: The Last Man

text: After the finale, the series was re-released, in parts, as oversized hardcovers with alternative cover art.


title: Y: The Last Man

text: In 2020 the first compendium in paperback format was published. The compendium one was published with a variant cover on November 2, 2021 for the release of .


title: Y: The Last Man

text: In 2009, "Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores" was nominated for the first Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.


title: Fraternity

text: A fraternity (from Latin "frater": "brother"; whence, "brotherhood") or fraternal organization is an organization, society, club or fraternal order traditionally of men associated together for various religious or secular aims. Fraternity in the Western concept developed in the Christian context, notably with the religious orders in the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. The concept was eventually further extended with medieval confraternities and guilds. In the early modern era, these were followed by fraternal orders such as Freemasons and Odd Fellows, along with gentlemen's clubs, student fraternities, and fraternal service organizations. Members are occasionally referred to as a "brother" or – usually in a religious context – "Frater" or "Friar".


title: Fraternity

text: Today, connotations of fraternities vary according to context including companionships and brotherhoods dedicated to the religious, intellectual, academic, physical, or social pursuits of its members. Additionally, in modern times, it sometimes connotes a secret society especially regarding freemasonry, odd fellows, various academic, and student societies.


title: Fraternity

text: Although membership in fraternities was and mostly still is limited to men, this is not always the case. There are mixed male and female orders, as well as wholly female religious orders and societies, some of which are known as sororities in North America. Notable modern fraternities or fraternal orders include some grand lodges operating among freemasons and odd fellows.


title: Fraternity

text: There are known fraternal organizations which existed as far back as ancient clan hero and goddess cults of Greek religions and in the Mithraic Mysteries of ancient Rome.


title: Fraternity

text: The background of the modern world of fraternities can be traced back to the confraternities in the Middle Ages, which were formed as lay organisations affiliated with the Catholic Church. Some were groups of men and women who were endeavoring to ally themselves more closely with the prayer and activity of the church; others were groups of tradesmen, which are more commonly referred to as guilds. These later confraternities evolved into purely secular fraternal societies, while the ones with religious goals continue to be the format of the modern Third Orders affiliated with the mendicant orders. Other yet took the shape as military orders during the Crusades, which later provided inspiration for elements of quite a few modern fraternal orders.


title: Fraternity

text: The development of modern fraternal orders was especially dynamic in the United States, where the freedom to associate outside governmental regulation is expressly sanctioned in law. There have been hundreds of fraternal organizations in the United States, and at the beginning of the 20th century the number of memberships equaled the number of adult males. (Due to multiple memberships, probably only 50% of adult males belonged to any organizations.) This led to the period being referred to as "the Golden age of fraternalism." In 1944 Arthur M. Schlesinger coined the phrase "a nation of joiners" to refer to the phenomenon. Alexis de Tocqueville also referred to the American reliance on private organization in the 1830s in "Democracy in America".


title: Fraternity

text: There are many attributes that fraternities may or may not have, depending on their structure and purpose. Fraternities can have differing degrees of secrecy, some form of initiation or ceremony marking admission, formal codes of behavior, dress codes disciplinary procedures, very differing amounts of real property and assets.


title: Fraternity

text: The only true distinction between a fraternity and any other form of social organizations is the implication that the members are freely associated as equals for a mutually beneficial purpose rather than because of a religious, governmental, commercial, or familial bond – although there are fraternities dedicated to each of these fields of association.


title: Fraternity

text: On college campuses, fraternities may be divided into four different groups: social, service, professional, and honorary.


title: Fraternity

text: Fraternities can be organized for many purposes, including university education, work skills, ethics, ethnicity, religion, politics, charity, chivalry, other standards of personal conduct, asceticism, service, performing arts, family command of territory, and even crime. There is almost always an explicit goal of mutual support, and while there have been fraternal orders for the well-off there have also been many fraternities for those in the lower ranks of society, especially for national or religious minorities. Trade unions also grew out of fraternities such as the Knights of Labor.


title: Fraternity

text: The ability to organize freely, apart from the institutions of government and religion, was a fundamental part of the establishment of the modern world. In "Living the Enlightenment", Margaret C. Jacobs showed that the development of Jurgen Habermas's "public space" in 17th-century Netherlands was closely related to the establishment of lodges of Freemasons.


title: Fraternity

text: The development of fraternities in England can be traced from guilds that emerged as the forerunners of trade unions and friendly societies. These guilds were set up to protect and care for their members at a time when there was no welfare state, trade unions or universal health care. Various secret signs and handshakes were created to serve as proof of their membership allowing them to visit guilds in distant places that are associated with the guild they belong.


title: Fraternity

text: Over the next 300 years or so, the idea of "ordinary" people joining together to improve their situation met with varying degrees of opposition (and persecution) from "People in Power", depending on whether they were seen as a source of revenue (taxes) or a threat to their power. When Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church, he viewed the guilds as supporters of the Pope, and in 1545 expropriated them. Later, Elizabeth I appropriated apprenticeships away from guilds, and by the end of her reign most guilds had been suppressed.


title: Fraternity

text: The suppression of these trade guilds removed an important form of social and financial support from ordinary men and women.


title: Fraternity

text: In London and other major cities, some Guilds (like the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows) survived by adapting their roles to a social support function. Eventually, these groups evolved in the early 18th century into more philosophical organizations focused on brotherly love and ethical living, with some elements inspired by organisations such as chivalric orders. Among guilds that became prosperous are the Freemasons, Odd Fellows and Foresters.


title: Fraternity

text: Fraternities have a history in American colleges and universities and form a major subsection of the whole range of fraternities. In Europe, students were organized in nations and corporations since the beginnings of the modern university in the late medieval period, but the situation can differ greatly by country.


title: Fraternity

text: In the United States, fraternities in colleges date to the 1770s but did not fully assume an established pattern until the 1820s. Many were strongly influenced by the patterns set by Freemasonry. The main difference between the older European organizations and the American organizations is that the American student societies virtually always include initiations, the formal use of symbolism, and a lodge-based organizational structure (chapters).


title: Fraternity

text: The oldest active social American college fraternity is the Kappa Alpha Society founded in 1825 at Union College. Sigma Phi Society (1827) and Delta Phi Fraternity (1827) were founded at the same school and comprise the Union Triad. The women's fraternities, now more commonly referred to as sororities, formed beginning in 1851 with the establishment of Alpha Delta Pi as the first women's fraternity.


title: Fraternity

text: Expansion to other schools, by way of approved chapters operating under a Charter or Warrant has been the model whereby US fraternities have grown nationally and into Canada. This resulted in the formation of national structures of governance where previously each nascent fraternity had been under the control of its first, often "Alpha" chapter. As fraternities grew larger they outpaced the capacity of volunteer management and began to employ staff, eventually requiring an administrative office. Today, hundreds of "National" fraternities account for roughly 15,000 active chapters. Some national groups remain quite small, with only a handful of active groups, while the largest will manage in excess of 300 active chapters. Alternatively, some fraternities remain as "Local" units, often retaining a literary society model that was more prevalent in the 19th Century. Fraternities offer a wide variety of services: National chapters and locals may or may not have buildings, and while many are residential, some have properties that are meeting halls only. Fraternities which provide residential space exhibit an array of services and sizes. Meals may be catered, or served by a full-time staff, but in other cases the members will cook their own meals. Maintenance is typically performed by members, although on some campuses the host institution handles capital improvements. Sorority chapters tend to be larger, with a business model that includes more formal maintenance and support. Properties may be independently owned by housing corporations, and in the case of some schools these will provide the bulk of residential options for undergraduates; these properties may be on leased or privately held land. Other chapters, often new chapters, are housed in dorms and meet in rented halls.


title: Fraternity

text: US Fraternities formed in roughly three waves. The "old-line" fraternities are considered those that formed prior to, and during the American Civil War, all of which were Eastern or Southern. The next wave coincided with the period immediately after the Civil War until 1920, organizations normally modeled after the old-line fraternities. After WWII, the most recent wave of formation has largely been on ethnic or multi-cultural lines, which continues today. Prior to the formation of the NIC, NPC and other associations, whole chapters or schismatic groups of members would occasionally break away to form new fraternities as an offshoot of a former national. These national associations were developed, in part, to prevent this practice.


title: Fraternity

text: The vast majority of US collegiate institutions recognize fraternities, ranging from a benign tolerance to active support. In Canada, fraternities are only rarely given official recognition, but rather, exist in the campus orbit as independent organizations. A few US campuses have historically banned fraternity participation, a position from which several have backtracked in the face of alumni criticism or ongoing student demand. For example, sororities (only) were banned at Stanford University in 1944 due to "extreme competition", but brought back in response to Title IX in 1977. Colby College, Amherst College, and a few others are the outliers, where these bans persist. The College of Wooster adopted a Greek ban 100 years ago, but fraternities and sororities there have continued as local organizations. In 2017 Harvard University attempted to ban single-sex clubs, a matter that was met with separate lawsuits in federal and Massachusetts courts. Often, Greek chapters that are suspended or banned will continue as "sub rosa" organizations.


title: Fraternity

text: Since at least the 1940s, US Fraternities have received increased scrutiny in the United States from incidents of hazing or racism that have received national attention, and on some campuses, such as Florida State, the organizations have been temporarily banned while administrators and national fraternities adjust to resolve these shared challenges.


title: Fraternity

text: In Germany the German Student Corps are the oldest academic fraternities. Twenty-eight were founded in the 18th century and two of them still exist. Most of their traditions have not changed much for the past two centuries. These traditions include academic fencing duels with sharp blades while wearing only eye and neck protection, or regular hunting events, as can be seen in examples such as Corps Hubertia Freiburg, Corps Palatia Munich, Corps Rhenania Heidelberg or Corps Bavaria Munich.


title: Fraternity

text: At Swedish universities, especially those of Uppsala and Lund, students have organized in nations since the 16th century. These organizations are open to all students who wish to join. Parallel to the nations both Uppsala and Lund play host to a large number of university-related secret societies, for both students and older academics.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: Legio IX Hispana ("9th Spanish Legion"), also written Legio VIIII Hispana, was a legion of the Imperial Roman army that existed from the 1st century BC until at least 120 AD. The legion fought in various provinces of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was stationed in Britain following the Roman invasion in 43 AD. The legion disappears from surviving Roman records after and there is no extant account of what happened to it.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The unknown fate of the legion has been the subject of considerable research and speculation. One theory (per historian Theodor Mommsen) was that the legion was wiped out in action in northern Britain soon after 108 AD, the date of the latest datable inscription of the Ninth found in Britain, perhaps during a rising of northern tribes against Roman rule. This view was popularised by the 1954 novel "The Eagle of the Ninth" in which the legion is said to have marched into Caledonia (modern day Scotland), after which it was "never heard of again".


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: This theory fell out of favour among modern scholars as successive inscriptions of IX Hispana were found in the site of the legionary base at Nijmegen (Netherlands), suggesting the Ninth may have been based there from , later than the legion's supposed annihilation in Britain. The Nijmegen evidence has led to suggestions that IX Hispana was destroyed in later conflicts of the 2nd century. Suggestions include the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 AD) or Marcus Aurelius's war against Parthia (161–166 AD) in Armenia. However, some scholars have ascribed the Nijmegen evidence to a mere detachment of IX Hispana, not the whole legion.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: In any event, it is clear that the IX Hispana did not exist during the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus (r. 193–211 AD), as it is not included in two identical but independent lists of the 33 legions existing in this period.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The origin of the legion is uncertain, but a 9th legion seems to have participated in the siege of Asculum during the Social War in 90 BC.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: When Julius Caesar became governor of Cisalpine Gaul in 58 BC, he inherited four legions, numbered VII, VIII, IX, X, that were already based there. The Ninth (IX) may have been quartered in Aquileia "to guard against attacks from the Illyrians". Caesar created two more legions (XI and XII), using all six for his attack on the Helvetii initiating the Gallic wars.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The Caesarian Ninth Legion fought in the battles of Dyrrhachium and Pharsalus (48 BC) and in the African campaign of 46 BC. After his final victory, Caesar disbanded the legion and settled the veterans in the area of Picenum.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: Following Caesar's assassination, Caesar's ally Ventidius Bassus made attempts to recreate the 7th, 8th, and 9th legions, but "it is not clear that any of these survived even to the time of Philippi".


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: Octavian later recalled the veterans of the Ninth to fight against the rebellion of Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. After defeating Sextus, they were sent to the province of Macedonia. The Ninth remained with Octavian in his war of 31 BC against Mark Antony and fought by his side in the Battle of Actium.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: With Octavian, whom the Senate later titled Augustus, established as sole ruler of the Roman world, the legion was sent to Hispania to take part in the large-scale campaign against the Cantabrians (25–19 BC). The nickname Hispana ("stationed in Hispania") is first found during the reign of Augustus and probably originated at that time.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: After this, the legion was probably part of the imperial army in the Rhine borderlands that was campaigning against the Germanic tribes. Following the abandonment of the eastern Rhine area (after the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9), the Ninth was relocated in Pannonia.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: In AD 43, the legion most likely participated in the Roman invasion of Britain led by the emperor Claudius and general Aulus Plautius, because they soon appear amongst the provincial garrison. In AD 50, the Ninth was one of two legions that defeated the forces of Caratacus at Caer Caradoc. Around the same year, the legion constructed a fort, Lindum Colonia, at Lincoln. Under the command of Caesius Nasica they put down the first revolt of Venutius, king of the Brigantes tribe, between 52 and 57.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The Ninth suffered a serious defeat at the Battle of Camulodunum under Quintus Petillius Cerialis in the rebellion of Boudica (61), when most of the foot-soldiers were killed in a disastrous attempt to relieve the besieged city of Camulodunum (Colchester). Only the cavalry escaped. The legion was later reinforced with legionaries from the Germania provinces. When Cerialis returned as governor of Britain ten years later, he took command of the Ninth once more in a successful campaign against the Brigantes in 71–72, to subdue north-central Britain. Around this time they constructed a new fortress at York (Eboracum), as shown by finds of tile-stamps from the site.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The Ninth participated in Agricola's invasion of Caledonia (modern Scotland) in 82–83. According to Tacitus, the legion narrowly escaped destruction when the Caledonians beyond the Forth launched a surprise attack at night on their fort. The Caledonians "burst upon them as they were terrified in their sleep". In desperate hand-to-hand fighting the Caledonians entered the camp, but Agricola was able to send cavalry to relieve the legion. Seeing the relief force, "the men of the Ninth Legion recovered their spirit, and sure of their safety, fought for glory", pushing back the Caledonians.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The last attested activity of the Ninth in Britain is during the rebuilding in stone of the legionary fortress at York (Eboracum) in 108. This is recorded in an inscribed stone tablet discovered in 1864, now displayed in the Yorkshire Museum in York.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: Several inscriptions attesting IX Hispana have been found in the site of the legionary fortress on the lower Rhine river at "Noviomagus Batavorum" (Nijmegen, Netherlands). These include some tile-stamps (dated 104–120); and a silver-plated bronze pendant, found in the 1990s, that was part of a "phalera" (military medal), with "LEG HISP IX" inscribed on the reverse. In addition, an altar to Apollo, dating from this period, was found at nearby "Aquae Granni" (Aachen, Germany), erected in fulfillment of a vow, by Lucius Latinius Macer, who describes himself as "primus pilus" (chief centurion) and as "praefectus castrorum" ("prefect of the camp", i.e. third-in-command) of IX Hispana. (it was commonplace for chief centurions, on completion of their single-year term of office, to be promoted to "praefectus castrorum").


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The archaeological evidence thus appears to indicate that elements of IX Hispana were present at Noviomagus sometime after 104 AD (when the previous incumbent legion, X Gemina, was transferred to the Danube) and that IX was probably replaced by a detachment of legion XXX Ulpia Victrix not long after 120 AD.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: Less clear is whether the whole IX legion was at Nijmegen or simply a detachment. The evidence for the presence of senior officers such as Macer convinced several scholars that the Ninth Legion as a whole was based there between 121 and 130. It may have been both: first a detachment, later followed by the rest of the legion: a "vexillatio Britannica" ("British detachment") is also attested at Nijmegen in this period. However, it is unclear whether this detachment was drawn from the IX Hispana (and its attached auxiliary regiments) alone, or from a mix of various British-based units.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The Nijmegen finds, dating to c. 120, were, in 2015, the latest records of Legion IX found. The Ninth was apparently no longer in existence after 197. Two lists of the legions survive from this era, one inscribed on a column found in Rome (CIL VI 3492) and the other a list of legions in existence "today" provided by the contemporary Greco-Roman historian Dio Cassius, writing c. 210–232 ("Roman History" LV.23–24). Both these lists date from after 197, as both include the 3 "Parthica" legions founded by Septimius Severus in that year. Both lists provide an identical list of 33 legions. Neither includes a "IX Hispana". It thus appears that IX Hispana disappeared sometime in the period 120–197.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The traditional theory is that the Ninth was destroyed in a war on Britain's northern frontier against the indigenous Celtic tribes. According to the eminent 19th-century German classicist Theodor Mommsen, "under Hadrian there was a terrible catastrophe here, apparently an attack on the fortress of Eboracum [York] and the annihilation of the legion stationed there, the very same Ninth that had fought so unluckily in the Boudican revolt." He suggested that a revolt of the Brigantes soon after 108 was the most likely explanation. Mommsen cited as evidence the Roman historian Marcus Cornelius Fronto, writing in the 160s AD, who told the emperor Marcus Aurelius: "Indeed, when your grandfather Hadrian held imperial power, what great numbers of soldiers were killed by the Jews, what great numbers by the Britons". The emperor Hadrian (r. 117–138) visited Britain in person around 122 AD, when he launched the construction of Hadrian's Wall because, according to one Roman source, "the Britons could not be kept under Roman control". It is plausible that Hadrian was responding to a military disaster.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: Mommsen's thesis was published long before the first traces of IX Hispana were found at Nijmegen. As a result of these, and of inscriptions proving that two senior officers, who were deputy commanders of the Ninth in c. 120, lived on for several decades to lead distinguished public careers, led to the Mommsen theory falling out of favour with many scholars. These now suggest later conflicts in other theatres as possible scenes of IX Hispana's demise:


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: Several scholars continue to argue that destruction in Britain is the most likely scenario for the Ninth's disappearance. Russell argues that "by far the most plausible answer to the question 'what happened to the Ninth' is that they fought and died in Britain, disappearing in the late 110s or early 120s when the province was in disarray".


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: Such scholars criticise the assumptions of those who extrapolate from inscription evidence, arguing that it is easy to confuse evidence about different persons with the same name. It is highly unlikely that if the legion continued in existence up to the Armenian war of 161, no records at all later than c. 120 would be known. Keppie says that "no inscriptions recording the building activities of the legion or the lives and careers of its members have come from the East", suggesting that if the legion did leave Britain, it ceased to exist very soon afterwards. Russell argues that "there is no evidence that the Ninth were ever taken out of Britain." He has claimed that the tile stamps found at Nijmegen cannot be dated to the period after 120, but "all seem to date to the 80s AD, when detachments of the Ninth were indeed on the Rhine fighting Germanic tribes." Keppie also says that the tiles cannot be securely dated, but suggests that they date from c. 105 during a temporary absence of the legion from Britain.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: However, Keppie does not support the theory that the legion met its end in Britain. He suggests that the legion may have been withdrawn from York around 117 to take part in the war in Parthia at the end of Trajan's reign. Keppie suggests that it was the legion's absence elsewhere that encouraged a native uprising, obliging Hadrian to send the Legio VI Victrix to Britain.


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The fate of the Ninth remains the subject of vigorous debate among scholars. Frere noted in 1967, "further evidence is needed before more can be said".


title: Legio IX Hispana

text: The Ninth Legion's mysterious disappearance has made it a popular subject for historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Israeli-occupied territories are the lands that were captured and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. While the term is currently applied to the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, it has also been used to refer to areas that were formerly occupied by Israel, namely the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon. Prior to Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, governance of the Palestinian territories was split between Egypt and Jordan, with the former having occupied the Gaza Strip and the latter having annexed the West Bank; the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights were under the sovereignty of Egypt and Syria, respectively. The first conjoined usage of the terms "occupied" and "territories" with regard to Israel was in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was drafted in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and called for: "the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" to be achieved by "the application of both the following principles: ... Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict ... Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: From 1967 to 1981, the four areas were administered under the Israeli Military Governorate and referred to by the United Nations (UN) as the "Occupied Arab Territories". The Israeli Military Governorate was dissolved in 1981, two years after the Egypt–Israel peace treaty that saw Egypt recognize Israel and Israel return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. After the treaty with Egypt, Israel effectively annexed the Golan Heights into its Northern District through the Golan Heights Law, and brought the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under the Israeli Civil Administration. Despite the dissolution of the military government, and in line with Egyptian demands, the term "Occupied Arab Territories" had remained in use, referring to the West Bank (including East Jerusalem, which Israel effectively annexed in 1980), the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. From 1999 to early 2013, the term "Occupied Palestinian Territory" was used to refer to territories that the interim governing body of the State of Palestine, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), controlled in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN General Assembly, and the UN Security Council all regard Israel as the occupying power for the territories. UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk called Israel's occupation "an affront to international law". The Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that Israel is holding the West Bank under "belligerent occupation". According to the Sasson Report, the Supreme Court of Israel, with a variety of different justices sitting, has repeatedly stated for more than four decades that international law applies to Israel's presence in the West Bank. However, successive Israeli governments have preferred the term "disputed territories" in the case of the West Bank, and Israel likewise maintains that the West Bank is disputed territory.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Israel unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The UN and a number of human rights organizations continue to consider Israel as the occupying power of the Gaza Strip due to its blockade of the territory; Israel rejects this characterization. On 24 September 2021, in a speech before the UN General Assembly, the President of the PNA, Mahmoud Abbas, gave Israel a one-year ultimatum to end its military occupation over the Palestinian territories, stating that its failure to do so would lead to the withdrawal of Palestine's 1993 "recognition of Israel based on the 1967 borders" (under the Oslo I Accord) and the bringing of the matter to the ICJ. In his speech, Abbas referred to Israeli policy as amounting to "apartheid" and involving "ethnic cleansing".


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The significance of the designation of these territories as occupied territory is that certain legal obligations fall on the occupying power under international law. Under international law there are certain laws of war governing military occupation, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention. One of those obligations is to maintain the "status quo" until the signing of a peace treaty, the resolution of specific conditions outlined in a peace treaty, or the formation of a new civilian government.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Israel disputes whether, and if so to what extent, it is an occupying power in relation to the Palestinian territories and as to whether Israeli settlements in these territories are in breach of Israel's obligations as an occupying power and constitute a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and whether the settlements constitute war crimes. In 2015, over 800,000 Israelis resided outside the 1949 Armistice Lines, constituting nearly 13% of Israel's Jewish population.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War. It established settlements along the Gulf of Aqaba and in the northeast portion, just below the Gaza Strip. It had plans to expand the settlement of Yamit into a city with a population of 200,000, though the actual population of Yamit did not exceed 3,000. The Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt in stages beginning in 1979 as part of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty. As required by the treaty, Israel evacuated Israeli military installations and civilian settlements prior to the establishment of "normal and friendly relations" between it and Egypt. Israel dismantled eighteen settlements, two air force bases, a naval base, and other installations by 1982, including the only oil resources under Israeli control. The evacuation of the civilian population, which took place in 1982, was done forcefully in some instances, such as the evacuation of Yamit. The settlements were demolished, as it was feared that settlers might try to return to their homes after the evacuation. Since 1982, the Sinai Peninsula has not been regarded as occupied territory.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon took place after Israel invaded Lebanon during the 1982 Lebanon War and subsequently retained its forces to support the Christian South Lebanon Army militia in Southern Lebanon. In 1982, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and allied Free Lebanon Army Christian militias seized large sections of Lebanon, including the capital of Beirut, amid the hostilities of the wider Lebanese Civil War. Later, Israel withdrew from parts of the occupied area between 1983 and 1985, but remained in partial control of the border region known as the "South Lebanon Security Belt", initially in coordination with the self-proclaimed Free Lebanon State, which executed a limited authority over portions of southern Lebanon until 1984, and later with the South Lebanon security belt administration and its South Lebanon Army (transformed from Free Lebanon Army), until the year 2000. Israel's stated purpose for the Security Belt was to create a space separating its northern border towns from terrorists residing in Lebanon.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: During the stay in the security belt, the IDF held many positions and supported the SLA. The SLA took over daily life in the security zone, initially as the official force of the Free Lebanon State and later as an allied militia. Notably, the South Lebanon Army controlled the prison in Khiam. In addition, United Nations (UN) forces and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were deployed to the security belt (from the end of Operation Litani in 1978).


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The strip was a few kilometers wide, and consisted of about 10% of the total territory of Lebanon, which housed about 150,000 people who lived in 67 villages and towns made up of Shiites, Maronites, and Druze (most of whom lived in the town of Hasbaya). In the central zone of the Strip was the Maronite town Marjayoun, which was the capital of the security belt. Residents remaining in the security zone had many contacts with Israel, many of whom have worked there and received various services from Israel.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Before the Israeli election in May 1999, the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, promised that within a year all Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon. When negotiation efforts failed between Israel and Syria—the goal of the negotiations was to bring a peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon as well, due to Syrian occupation of Lebanon until 2005—Barak led the withdrawal of the IDF to the Israeli border on 24 May 2000. No soldiers were killed or wounded during the redeployment to the internationally recognized border of Blue Line.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. A ceasefire was signed on 11 June 1967 and the Golan Heights came under Israeli military administration. Syria rejected UNSC Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967, which called for the return of Israeli-occupied State territories in exchange for peaceful relations. Israel had accepted Resolution 242 in a speech to the Security Council on 1 May 1968. In March 1972, Syria "conditionally" accepted Resolution 242, and in May 1974, the Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria was signed.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Syria attempted to recapture the Golan Heights militarily, but the attempt was unsuccessful. Israel and Syria signed a ceasefire agreement in 1974 that left almost all the Heights under Israeli control, while returning a narrow demilitarized zone to Syrian control. A United Nations observation force was established in 1974 as a buffer between the sides. By Syrian formal acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 338, which set out the cease-fire at the end of the Yom Kippur War, Syria also accepted Resolution 242.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: On 14 December 1981, Israel passed the Golan Heights Law, extending Israeli administration and law to the territory. Israel has expressly avoided using the term "annexation" to describe the change of status. However, the UN Security Council has rejected the "de facto" annexation in UNSC Resolution 497, which declared it as "null and void and without international legal effect", and consequently continuing to regard the Golan Heights as Israeli-occupied territory. The measure has also been criticized by other countries, either as illegal or as not being helpful to the Middle East peace process.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Syria wants the return of the Golan Heights, while Israel has maintained a policy of "land for peace" based on Resolution 242. The first high-level public talks aimed at a resolution of the Syria–Israel conflict were held at and after the multilateral Madrid Conference of 1991. Throughout the 1990s several Israeli governments negotiated with Syria's president Hafez Al-Assad. While serious progress was made, they were unsuccessful.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In 2004, there were 34 settlements in the Golan Heights, populated by around 18,000 people. Today, an estimated 20,000 Israeli settlers and 20,000 Syrians live in the territory. All inhabitants are entitled to Israeli citizenship, which would entitle them to an Israeli driver's license and enable them to travel freely in Israel. The non-Jewish residents, who are mostly Druze, have nearly all declined to take Israeli citizenship.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In the Golan Heights there is another area occupied by Israel, namely the Shebaa farms. Syria and Lebanon have claimed that the farms belong to Lebanon and in 2007 a UN cartographer came to the conclusion that the Shebaa farms do actually belong to Lebanon (contrary to the belief held by Israel). UN then said that Israel should relinquish the control of this area.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Both of these territories were part of Mandate Palestine, and both have populations consisting primarily of Palestinians Arabs, including significant numbers of refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel and territory Israel controlled after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Today, Palestinians make up around half of Jordan's population.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Jordan occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from 1948 to 1967, annexing it in 1950 and granting Jordanian citizenship to the residents in 1954 (the annexation claims and citizenship grants were rescinded in 1988 when Jordan acknowledged the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestinian people). Egypt administered the Gaza Strip from 1948 to 1967 but did not annex it or make Gazans Egyptian citizens.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The West Bank was allotted to the Arab state under United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, but the West Bank was occupied by Transjordan after the 1948 war. In April 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank, but this was recognized only by the United Kingdom and Pakistan. (see 1949 Armistice Agreements, Green Line)


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In 1967, the West Bank came under Israeli military administration. Israel retained the mukhtar (mayoral) system of government inherited from Jordan, and subsequent governments began developing infrastructure in Arab villages under its control. (see Palestinians and Israeli law, International legal issues of the conflict, Palestinian economy). As a result of "Enclave law", large portions of Israeli civil law are applied to Israeli settlements and Israeli residents in the occupied territories.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Since the Israel–Palestine Liberation Organization letters of recognition of 1993, most of the Palestinian population and cities came under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, and only partial Israeli military control, although Israel has frequently redeployed its troops and reinstated full military administration in various parts of the two territories.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In 2000, the Israeli government started to construct the Israeli West Bank barrier, within the West Bank, separating Israel and several of its settlements, as well as a significant number of Palestinians, from the remainder of the West Bank. State of Israel cabinet approved a route to construct separation barrier whose total length will be approximately built mainly in the West Bank and partly along the 1949 Armistice line, or "Green Line" between Israel and Palestinian West Bank. 12% of the West Bank area is on the Israel side of the barrier.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In 2004, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that the barrier violates international law. It claimed that "Israel cannot rely on a right of self-defence or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the wrongfulness of the construction of the wall". However, Israel government derived its justification for constructing this barrier with Prime Minister Ehud Barak stating that it is "essential to the Palestinian nation in order to foster its national identity and independence without being dependent on the State of Israel". The Israeli Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, stated that Israel has been holding the areas of Judea and Samaria in belligerent occupation, since 1967. The court also held that the normative provisions of public international law regarding belligerent occupation are applicable. The Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War 1949 were both cited.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: About 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank along the Israeli West Bank barrier (and a further 200,000 live in East Jerusalem and 50,000 in the former Israeli–Jordanian no-man's land). The barrier has many effects on Palestinians including reduced freedoms, road closures, loss of land, increased difficulty in accessing medical and educational services in Israel, restricted access to water sources, and economic effects. Regarding the violation of freedom of Palestinians, in a 2005 report, the United Nations stated that:[47]


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: ...it is difficult to overstate the humanitarian impact of the Barrier. The route inside the West Bank severs communities, people's access to services, livelihoods and religious and cultural amenities. In addition, plans for the Barrier's exact route and crossing points through it are often not fully revealed until days before construction commences. This has led to considerable anxiety among Palestinians about how their future lives will be impacted...The land between the Barrier and the Green Line constitutes some of the most fertile in the West Bank. It is currently the home for 49,400 West Bank Palestinians living in 38 villages and towns.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: On Feb 6, 2017, The Knesset passed the controversial Regulation Law, which aimed at retroactively legalizing 2,000 to 4,000 Israeli settlements in Area C. On June 9, 2020, the Israeli Supreme Court struck down the law as "infringing on the property rights of Palestinian residents."


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Jerusalem has created additional issues in relation to the question of whether or not it is occupied territory. The 1947 UN Partition Plan had contemplated that all of Jerusalem would be an international city within an international area that included Bethlehem for at least ten years, after which the residents would be allowed to conduct a referendum and the issue could be re-examined by the Trusteeship Council.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: However, after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Jordan captured East Jerusalem and the Old City, and Israel captured and annexed the western part of Jerusalem . Jordan bilaterally annexed East Jerusalem along with the rest of the West Bank in 1950 as a temporary trustee at the request of a Palestinian delegation, and although the annexation was recognized by only two countries, it was not condemned by the UNSC. The British did not recognize the territory as sovereign to Jordan. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. On June 27, Israel extended its laws, jurisdiction, and administration to East Jerusalem and several nearby towns and villages, and incorporated the area into the Jerusalem Municipality. In 1980, the Knesset passed the Jerusalem Law, which was declared a Basic Law, which declared Jerusalem to be the "complete and united" capital of Israel. However, United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 declared this action to be "null and void", and that it "must be rescinded forthwith". The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem and considers it an occupied territory.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: UN Security Council Resolution 478 also called upon countries which held their diplomatic delegations to Israel in Jerusalem, to move them outside the city. Most nations with embassies in Jerusalem complied, and relocated their embassies to Tel Aviv or other Israeli cities prior to the adoption of Resolution 478. Following the withdrawals of Costa Rica and El Salvador in August 2006, no country maintained its embassy in Jerusalem until 2018, although Bolivia and Paraguay once had theirs in nearby Mevaseret Zion. The United States Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, stating that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999." As a result of the Embassy Act, official U.S. documents and web sites refer to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Until May 2018, the law had never been implemented, because successive U.S. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama exercised the law's presidential waiver, citing national security interests. On 14 May 2018, the U.S. opened its Embassy in Jerusalem.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: East Jerusalem residents are increasingly becoming integrated into Israeli society, in terms of education, citizenship, national service and in other aspects. Recent surveys show that, if given the option of having East Jerusalem transferred today from Israeli rule to the Palestinian National Authority, most East Jerusalem Palestinians would oppose the proposal. According to Middle East expert David Pollock, in the hypothesis that a final agreement was reached between Israel and the Palestinians with the establishment of a two-state solution, 48% of East Jerusalem Arabs would prefer being citizens of Israel, while 42% of them would prefer the State of Palestine. 9% would prefer Jordanian citizenship.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The Gaza Strip was allotted to the Arab state envisioned by the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, but no Arab state formed as a result of the 1947 partition plan. As a result of the 1949 Armistice Agreements, the Gaza Strip became occupied by Egypt.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Between 1948 and 1967, the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian military administration, being officially under the jurisdiction of the All-Palestine Government until in 1959 it was merged into the United Arab Republic, de facto becoming under direct Egyptian military governorship.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Between 1967 and 1993, the Gaza Strip was under Israeli military administration. In March 1979, Egypt renounced all claims to the Gaza Strip in the Egypt–Israel peace treaty.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Since the Israel–Palestine Liberation Organization letters of recognition of 1993, the Gaza Strip came under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: A July 2004 opinion of the International Court of Justice treated Gaza as a part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In February 2005, the Israeli government voted to implement a unilateral disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip. The plan began to be implemented on 15 August 2005, and was completed on 12 September 2005. Under the plan, all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip (and four in the West Bank) and the joint Israeli-Palestinian Erez Industrial Zone were dismantled with the removal of all 9,000 Israeli settlers (most of them in the Gush Katif settlement area in the Strip's southwest) and military bases. Some settlers resisted the order, and were forcibly removed by the IDF. On 12 September 2005 the Israeli cabinet formally declared an end to Israeli military occupation of the Gaza Strip. To avoid allegations that it was still in occupation of any part of the Gaza Strip, Israel also withdrew from the Philadelphi Route, which is a narrow strip adjacent to the Strip's border with Egypt, after Egypt's agreement to secure its side of the border. Under the Oslo Accords the Philadelphi Route was to remain under Israeli control to prevent the smuggling of materials (such as ammunition) and people across the border with Egypt. With Egypt agreeing to patrol its side of the border, it was hoped that the objective would be achieved. However, Israel maintained its control over the crossings in and out of Gaza. The Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza was monitored by the Israeli army through special surveillance cameras. Official documents such as passports, I.D. cards, export and import papers, and many others had to be approved by the Israeli army.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The Israeli position is that it no longer occupies Gaza, as Israel does not exercise effective control or authority over any land or institutions inside the Gaza Strip. Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel Tzipi Livni stated in January, 2008: "Israel got out of Gaza. It dismantled its settlements there. No Israeli soldiers were left there after the disengagement." Israel also notes that Gaza does not belong to any sovereign state.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Immediately after Israel withdrew in 2005, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stated, "the legal status of the areas slated for evacuation has not changed." Human Rights Watch also contested that this ended the occupation. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and many other international bodies and NGOs continues to consider Israel to be the occupying power of the Gaza Strip as Israel controls the Gaza Strip's airspace and territorial waters as well as the movement of people or goods in or out of Gaza by air or sea.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs maintains an office on "Occupied Palestinian Territory", which concerns itself with the Gaza Strip. In his statement on the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories" wrote that international humanitarian law applied to Israel "in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war." In a 2009 interview on Democracy Now Christopher Gunness, spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) contends that Israel is an occupying power. However, Meagan Buren, Senior Adviser to the Israel Project, a pro-Israel media group contests that characterization.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In 2007, after Hamas defeated Fatah in the Battle of Gaza (2007) and took control over the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza. Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli raids, such as Operation Hot Winter continued into 2008. A six month ceasefire was agreed in June 2008, but it was broken several times by both Israel and Hamas. As it reached its expiry, Hamas announced that they were unwilling to renew the ceasefire without improving the terms. At the end of December 2008 Israeli forces began Operation Cast Lead, launching the Gaza War that left an estimated 1,166–1,417 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In January 2012, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General stated that under resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly, the UN still regards Gaza to be a part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Al Haq, an independent Palestinian human rights organization based in Ramallah in the West Bank and an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, has asserted that "As noted in Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 'a party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty'. As such, Israeli reliance on local law does not justify its violations of its international legal obligations". Further, the Palestinian mission to the U.N. has argued that:


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: it is of no relevance whether a State has a monist or a dualist approach to the incorporation of international law into domestic law. A position dependent upon such considerations contradicts Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969 which states that: ""a state is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purposes of a treaty when it has undertaken an act expressing its consent thereto."" The Treaty, which is substantially a codification of customary international law, also provides that a State ""may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty"" (Art. 27).


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The Israeli government maintains that according to international law the West Bank status is that of disputed territories.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The question is important given if the status of "occupied territories" has a bearing on the legal duties and rights of Israel toward those. Hence it has been discussed in various forums including the UN.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In two cases decided shortly after independence, in the Shimshon and Stampfer cases, the Supreme Court of Israel held that the fundamental rules of international law accepted as binding by all "civilized" nations were incorporated in the domestic legal system of Israel. The Nuremberg Military Tribunal determined that the articles annexed to the Hague IV Convention of 1907 were customary law that had been recognized by all civilized nations. In the past, the Supreme Court has argued that the Geneva Convention insofar it is not supported by domestic legislation "does not bind this Court, its enforcement being a matter for the states which are parties to the Convention". They ruled that "Conventional international law does not become part of Israeli law through automatic incorporation, but only if it is adopted or combined with Israeli law by enactment of primary or subsidiary legislation from which it derives its force". However, in the same decision the Court ruled that the Fourth Hague Convention rules governing belligerent occupation did apply, since those were recognized as customary international law.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The Israeli High Court of Justice determined in the 1979 Elon Moreh case that the area in question was under occupation and that accordingly only the military commander of the area may requisition land according to Article 52 of the Regulations annexed to the Hague IV Convention. Military necessity had been an after-thought in planning portions of the Elon Moreh settlement. That situation did not fulfill the precise strictures laid down in the articles of the Hague Convention, so the Court ruled the requisition order had been invalid and illegal. In recent decades, the government of Israel has argued before the Supreme Court of Israel that its authority in the territories is based on the international law of "belligerent occupation", in particular the Hague Conventions. The court has confirmed this interpretation many times, for example in its 2004 and 2005 rulings on the separation fence.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In its June 2005 ruling upholding the constitutionality of the Gaza disengagement, the Court determined that "Judea and Samaria" [West Bank] and the Gaza area are lands seized during warfare, and are not part of Israel:The Judea and Samaria areas are held by the State of Israel in belligerent occupation. The long arm of the state in the area is the military commander. He is not the sovereign in the territory held in belligerent occupation (see The Beit Sourik Case, at p. 832). His power is granted him by public international law regarding belligerent occupation. The legal meaning of this view is twofold: first, Israeli law does not apply in these areas. They have not been "annexed" to Israel. Second, the legal regime which applies in these areas is determined by public international law regarding belligerent occupation (see HCJ 1661/05 The Gaza Coast Regional Council v. The Knesset et al. (yet unpublished, paragraph 3 of the opinion of the Court; hereinafter – The Gaza Coast Regional Council Case). In the center of this public international law stand the Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague, 18 October 1907 (hereinafter – The Hague Regulations). These regulations are a reflection of customary international law. The law of belligerent occupation is also laid out in IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War 1949 (hereinafter – the Fourth Geneva Convention).


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Soon after the 1967 war, Israel issued a military order stating that the Geneva Conventions applied to the recently occupied territories, but this order was rescinded a few months later. For a number of years, Israel argued on various grounds that the Geneva Conventions do not apply. One is the Missing Reversioner theory which argued that the Geneva Conventions apply only to the sovereign territory of a High Contracting Party, and therefore do not apply since Jordan never exercised sovereignty over the region. However, that interpretation is not shared by the international community. The application of Geneva Convention to Occupied Palestinian Territories was further upheld by International Court of Justice, UN General Assembly, UN Security Council and the Israeli Supreme Court.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In the cases before the Israeli High Court of Justice the government has agreed that the military commander's authority is anchored in the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, and that the humanitarian rules of the Fourth Geneva Convention apply. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that the Fourth Geneva Convention and certain parts of Additional Protocol I reflect customary international law that is applicable in the occupied territories.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar, taking a different approach, wrote in the 1970s that there is no "de jure" applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention regarding occupied territories to the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign." Israeli diplomat, Dore Gold, has stated that the language of "occupation" has allowed Palestinian spokesmen to obfuscate this history. By repeatedly pointing to "occupation," they manage to reverse the causality of the conflict, especially in front of Western audiences. Thus, the current territorial dispute is allegedly the result of an Israeli decision "to occupy," rather than a result of a war imposed on Israel by a coalition of Arab states in 1967.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Gershom Gorenberg, disputing these views, has written that the Israeli government knew at the outset that it was violating the Geneva Convention by creating civilian settlements in the territories under IDF administration. He explained that as the legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron was the Israeli government's expert on international law. On September 16, 1967 Meron wrote a top secret memo to Mr. Adi Yafeh, Political Secretary of the Prime Minister regarding "Settlement in the Administered Territories" which said "My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the Administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." Moshe Dayan authored a secret memo in 1968 proposing massive settlement in the territories which said "Settling Israelis in administered territory, as is known, contravenes international conventions, but there is nothing essentially new about that."


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Various Israeli Cabinets have made political statements and many of Israel's citizens and supporters dispute that the territories are occupied and claim that use of the term "occupied" in relation to Israel's control of the areas has no basis in international law or history, and that it prejudges the outcome of any future or ongoing negotiations. They argue it is more accurate to refer to the territories as "disputed" rather than "occupied" although they agree to apply the humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention pending resolution of the dispute. Yoram Dinstein, has dismissed the position that they are not occupied as being "based on dubious legal grounds". Many Israeli government websites do refer to the areas as being "occupied territories". According to the BBC, "Israel argues that the international conventions relating to occupied land do not apply to the Palestinian territories because they were not under the legitimate sovereignty of any state in the first place."


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In the "Report on the Legal Status of Building in Judea and Samaria", usually referred to as "Levy Report", published in July 2012, a three-member committee headed by former Israeli Supreme Court justice Edmund Levy which was appointed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu comes to the conclusion that Israel's presence in the West Bank is not an occupation in the legal sense, and that the Israeli settlements in those territories do not contravene international law. The report has met with both approval and harsh criticism in Israel and outside. As of July 2013, the report was not brought before the Israeli cabinet or any parliamentary or governmental body which would have the power to approve it.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: According to the views of most adherents of Religious Zionism and to certain streams of Orthodox Judaism, there are no, and cannot be, "occupied territories" because all of the Land of Israel ( "ʼÉreṣ Yiśrāʼēl", "Eretz Yisrael") belongs to the Jews, also known as the Children of Israel, since the times of Biblical antiquity based on various Hebrew Bible passages.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The Jewish religious belief that the area is a God-given inheritance of the Jewish people is based on the Torah, especially the books of Genesis and Exodus, as well as the Prophets. According to the Book of Genesis, the land was promised by God to the descendants of Abraham through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. A literal reading of the text suggests that the land promise is (or was at one time) one of the Biblical covenants between God and the Israelites, as the following verses show.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The definition of the limits of this territory varies between biblical passages, some of the main ones being:


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The boundaries of the Land of Israel are different from the borders of historical Israelite kingdoms. The Bar Kokhba state, the Herodian Kingdom, the Hasmonean Kingdom, and possibly the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah ruled lands with similar but not identical boundaries. The current State of Israel also has similar but not identical boundaries.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: A small sect of Haredi Jews, the Neturei Karta opposes Zionism and calls for a peaceful dismantling of the State of Israel, in the belief that Jews are forbidden to have their own state until the coming of the Messiah.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The official term used by the United Nations Security Council to describe Israeli-occupied territories is "the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem", which is used, for example, in Resolutions 446 (1979), 452 (1979), 465 (1980) and 484. A conference of the parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have also resolved that these territories are occupied and that the Fourth Geneva Convention provisions regarding occupied territories apply.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980 (see Jerusalem Law) has not been recognized by any other country, and the annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981 (see Golan Heights Law) has been recognized only by the United States. United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 declared the annexation of East Jerusalem "null and void" and required that it be rescinded. United Nations Security Council Resolution 497 also declared the annexation of the Golan "null and void". Following withdrawal by Israel from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, as part of the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty, the Sinai ceased to be considered occupied territory. While the Palestinian Authority, the EU, the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly<ref name="http://unispal.un.org"></ref> and the UN Security Council consider East Jerusalem to be part of the West Bank and occupied by Israel; Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital and sovereign territory.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The international community has formally entrusted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with the role of guardian of international humanitarian law. That includes a watchdog function by which it takes direct action to encourage parties to armed conflict to comply with international humanitarian law. The head of the International Red Cross delegation to Israel and the Occupied Territories stated that the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions that constitute war crime.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In 1986, the International Court of Justice ruled that portions of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 merely declare existing customary international law. In 1993, the UN Security Council adopted a binding Chapter VII resolution establishing an International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The resolution approved a Statute which said that the problem of adherence of some but not all States to the Geneva Conventions does not arise, since beyond any doubt the Convention is declarative of customary international law. The subsequent interpretation of the International Court of Justice does not support Israel's view on the applicability of the Geneva Conventions.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In July 2004, the International Court of Justice delivered an Advisory Opinion on the 'Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory'. The Court observed that under customary international law as reflected in Article 42 of the Regulations annexed to the Hague IV Convention, territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army, and the occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised. Israel raised a number of exceptions and objections, but the Court found them unpersuasive. The Court ruled that territories had been occupied by the Israeli armed forces in 1967, during the conflict between Israel and Jordan, and that subsequent events in those territories, had done nothing to alter the situation.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Multiple United Nations General Assembly resolutions have described the continuing occupation of Palestine as illegal. Michael Lynk, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, in his 2017 report to the UN General Assembly has opined that the occupation itself has become illegal and has recommended that a UN study be commissioned to determine this and to consider asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion. The general thrust of international law scholarship addressing this question has concluded that, regardless of whether it was initially legal, the occupation has become illegal over time. Reasons cited for its illegality include the violation of the prohibition on the acquisition of territory through force, that the occupation violates the Palestinian right to self-determination, that the occupation itself is an illegal regime "of alien subjugation, domination and exploitation", or some combination of these factors.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The establishment of Israeli settlements is held to constitute a transfer of Israel's civilian population into the occupied territories and as such is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. This is disputed by other legal experts who argue with this interpretation of the law.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In 2000, the editors of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Palestine Yearbook of International Law (1998–1999) said "the "transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory" amounts to a war crime. They hold that this is obviously applicable to Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Arab Territories."


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In 2004 the International Court of Justice, in an advisory, non-binding opinion, noted that the Security Council had described Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in the occupied territories as a "flagrant violation" of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Court also concluded that the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established "in breach of international law" and that all the States parties to the Geneva Convention are under an obligation to ensure compliance by Israel with international law as embodied in the Convention.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: In May 2012 the 27 ministers of foreign affairs of the European Union published a report strongly denouncing policies of the State of Israel in the West Bank and finding that settlements in the West Bank are illegal: "settlements remain illegal under international law, irrespective of recent decisions by the government of Israel. The EU reiterates that it will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties." The report by all EU foreign ministers also criticized the Israeli government's failure to dismantle settler outposts illegal even under domestic Israeli law."


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Israel denies that the Israeli settlements are in breach of any international laws. The Israeli Supreme Court has yet to rule decisively on settlement legality under the Geneva Convention.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The United Nations Human Rights Commission decided in March 2012 to establish a panel charged with investigating "the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem." In reaction the government of Israel ceased cooperating with the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights and boycotted the UN Human Rights Commission. The U.S. government acceded to the Israeli government demand to attempt to thwart the formation of such a panel.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: On January 31, 2012 the United Nations independent "International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" filed a report stating that Israeli settlement led to a multitude of violations of Palestinian human rights and that if Israel did not stop all settlement activity immediately and begin withdrawing all settlers from the West Bank, it potentially might face a case at the International Criminal Court. It said that Israel was in violation of article 49 of the fourth Geneva convention forbidding transferring civilians of the occupying nation into occupied territory. It held that the settlements are "leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination." After Palestine's admission to the United Nations as a non-member state in September 2012, it potentially may have its complaint heard by the International Court. Israel's foreign ministry replied to the report saying that "Counterproductive measures – such as the report before us – will only hamper efforts to find a sustainable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The human rights council has sadly distinguished itself by its systematically one-sided and biased approach towards Israel."


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: Following a decision by European Union (EU) foreign ministers in December 2012 stating that "all agreements between the state of Israel and the EU must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967," the European Commission issued guidelines for the 2014 to 2020 financial framework covering all areas of co-operation between the EU and Israel, including economics, science, culture, sports and academia but excluding trade on 30 June 2013. According to the directive all future agreements between the EU and Israel must explicitly exclude Jewish settlements and Israeli institutions and bodies situated across the pre-1967 Green Line – including the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. EU grants, funding, prizes or scholarships will only be granted if a settlement exclusion clause is included, forcing the Israeli government to concede in writing that settlements in the occupied territories are outside the state of Israel to secure agreements with the EU.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: the guidelines are...in conformity with the EU's longstanding position that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and with the non-recognition by the EU of Israel's sovereignty over the occupied territories, irrespective of their legal status under domestic Israeli law. At the moment Israeli entities enjoy financial support and cooperation with the EU and these guidelines are designed to ensure that this remains the case. At the same time concern has been expressed in Europe that Israeli entities in the occupied territories could benefit from EU support. The purpose of these guidelines is to make a distinction between the State of Israel and the occupied territories when it comes to EU support.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The guidelines do not apply to any Palestinian body in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, and they do not affect agreements between the EU and the PLO or the Palestinian Authority, nor do they apply to Israeli government ministries or national agencies, to private individuals, to human rights organizations operating in the occupied territories, or to NGOs working toward promoting peace which operate in the occupied territories.


title: Israeli-occupied territories

text: The move was described as an "earthquake" by an Israeli official who wished to remain anonymous, and prompted harsh criticism by prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu who said in a broadcast statement: "As prime minister of Israel, I will not allow the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live in the West Bank, Golan Heights and our united capital Jerusalem to be harmed. We will not accept any external diktats about our borders. This matter will only be settled in direct negotiations between the parties." Israel is also concerned that the same policy could extend to settlement produce and goods exported to European markets, as some EU member states are pressing for an EU-wide policy of labelling produce and goods originating in Jewish settlements to allow consumers to make informed choices. A special ministerial panel led by prime minister Netanyahu, decided to approach the EU and demand several key amendments in the guidelines before entering any new projects with the Europeans. A spokesperson for the EU confirmed that further talks would take place between Israel and the EU, stating: "We stand ready to organise discussions during which such clarifications can be provided and look forward to continued successful EU-Israel cooperation, including in the area of scientific cooperation."