Canadian Court to Hear War Crime Suit

by Barbara McPherson | June 22, 2009 at 12:14 pm

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Monday a Quebec Superior Court will consider a war crime suit for two Canadian companies' involvement in the building of Israeli settlements. The settlements are located in Palestine on the West Bank.

Activists filed the suit against Green Mount International and Green Park International - two Canadian companies contracted to build in the settlement of Modiin Illit, in a Montreal court, where the companies are registered.

In the three-day hearing at Quebec Superior Court in Montreal beginning on Monday, they will argue Bilin's land is subject to the rules and obligations of international law because the West Bank has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967.

This area has been slowly occupied by Jewish settlers since the occupation as part of the aftermath of the 1967 war. Private land owned by Palestinians have had villages built on them and the rightful landowners have been dispossed. This occupation of Palestinian land has added to the enmity between the two groups. President Barak Obama has called for a cessation of the building.

Such questions had already arisen in 2005, when a government-commissioned report accused the settlement division of complicity in diverting funds and confiscating West Bank land to put up some of the more than 100 "outposts" - small wildcat settlements - that settlers have built, some on privately held Palestinian land.

They had no government sanction, yet a slew of former Cabinet ministers, settler leaders and lawmakers have confirmed that they went up with the full knowledge of the state, and their removal is viewed by the U.S. and others as a first step toward a broader rollback of settlement expansion in the West Bank.