Baroness Tonge – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Tonge on 2016-02-26.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they define the word illegal” with reference to the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to which Israel is a state party, prohibits an occupying power from transferring its own civilian population into occupied territory. Consequently, settlements are illegal under international law. The UK’s position on the settlements is clear. They are illegal, present an obstacle to peace and take us further away from a two-state solution.