Dann’s June 2026 essay on Israeli settlements argues that settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights are lawful under the Mandate for Palestine and UN Charter Article 80, and that the ICRC’s ruling that they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention was a political act rather than a legal one. The essay, published on June 23, 2026, traces the legal chain from the British Mandate through the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention to the present day.
In the essay, Dann, a PhD historian, writer, and journalist, wrote that the ICRC reached its view in a closed meeting. Israel was not present, and the states whose territory Israel captured in 1967 were not present either. He argued that the convention’s drafters meant Article 49 to apply to territory belonging to a recognized sovereign, and that no such sovereign held the West Bank, Gaza, or the Golan in 1967. That argument, set against a chain of historical events from the British Mandate to the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, is the spine of the essay.
The Argument Dann Made
Dann’s essay, headlined ‘The truth about Israeli settlements,’ opens with the 1967 war. Four territories changed hands. The Golan Heights came from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, and Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem from Jordan, he writes. ‘Israel allowed Jews to move there and build communities (settlements),’ he notes, and the legality of those communities is the hinge of the dispute.
The first target is the ICRC. ‘Some were opposed and asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for its opinion,’ he writes. ‘Meeting secretly, the ICRC decided that Israel had violated Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC), and declared that Israel had illegally ‘occupied Palestinian territory’ (OPT).’ Dann calls the ICRC’s process a kind of judicial action without a court. He argues that its protocols are closed, the participants are secret, the decisions are not subject to appeal, and the ICRC’s reading became the basis for accusing Israel of ‘occupying Palestinian land.’
Most of the international community, including NGOs and institutions such as the International Court of Justice, treat the ICRC’s reading as binding. Dann argues that it is not.
All Jewish settlements, therefore, are legal.
Moshe Dann, a PhD historian, wrote in The Jerusalem Post on June 23, 2026.
What Article 49 Prohibits
Article 49 sits in Section III of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the 1949 treaty that governs the protection of civilians in time of war. The article has six paragraphs, each addressing a different aspect of population movement. The ICRC’s 2025 commentary on the convention treats paragraphs 1 and 6 as the heart of Article 49.
Paragraph 1 prohibits the forcible transfer or deportation of ‘protected persons’ from occupied territory. The text reads: ‘Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.’ The ICRC’s commentary describes this as a rule of customary international humanitarian law. The 1949 Diplomatic Conference in Geneva, the body that drafted the convention, considered a broader ban on all transfers but settled on a prohibition of forcible transfers to accommodate voluntary departures by persecuted minorities. The text of paragraph 1 is the longest in Article 49, and it has generated the most subsequent jurisprudence.
Paragraph 6 is the shorter clause, and the one that drives the settlements debate. Its text reads in full: ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’ The ICRC’s commentary traces this paragraph’s roots to the post-Second World War prosecutions of Nazi officials for the ‘Germanization’ of occupied territories. The convention did not, however, list violations of paragraph 6 among the ‘grave breaches’ of the treaty, a category reserved for the most serious offenses.
The text of paragraph 6 does not specify which territories it covers, and it does not say what kind of civilian movement it prohibits. The ICRC has read it as covering all territory held by Israel in 1967, including the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, and as prohibiting any organized civilian movement into those areas. Dann reads it differently. He argues that paragraph 6 was drafted for occupied territory belonging to a recognized sovereign, and that the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan were not the territory of a recognized sovereign in 1967. The dispute, in his telling, is not over the text but over what counts as ‘occupied territory’ in the first place.
| Article 49(6) element | ICRC reading (Dann’s summary) | Dann’s reading |
|---|---|---|
| “Territory it occupies” | All territory held by Israel after 1967, including the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights | Territory belonging to a recognized sovereign, which the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan were not in 1967 |
| “Parts of its own civilian population” | Israeli citizens moving into settlements | Not addressed differently |
| “Deport or transfer” | Any organized civilian movement into the territory, voluntary or otherwise | Not addressed differently |
The Mandate and Article 80
Dann’s second legal pillar is the Mandate for Palestine, the League of Nations instrument that placed the territory under British administration after the First World War. The preamble of the Mandate for Palestine recognizes ‘the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.’ Article 2 makes the Mandatory ‘responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home.’ Article 6 directs the administration to ‘encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land.’
The League of Nations was dissolved after the Second World War and the Mandate system came to an end. The United Nations Charter, signed in 1945, addressed the transition in Article 80. The relevant text reads: ‘…nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.’
Dann reads Article 80 as preserving the Mandate’s recognition of Jewish settlement rights. The chain, in his telling, runs from the Mandate’s preamble through Article 80 to the present: the Mandate guaranteed close Jewish settlement on the land, Article 80 preserved that guarantee when the Mandate ended, and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention cannot, in his reading, override a guarantee the UN Charter explicitly preserved. International legal scholars have read Article 80 differently, with some calling it a savings clause that protected pending decisions rather than a substantive grant of new settlement rights. That disagreement is the central fault line between Dann’s reading and the international legal mainstream, and it is the part of his argument that the International Court of Justice, which has treated the ICRC’s reading as authoritative, has not accepted.
From the 1948 War to the 1967 Conquest
Dann traces the political dispute back to 1948, when Britain ended the Mandate and the United Nations proposed partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. ‘Jews accepted it; the Arabs launched a war of extermination in 1948 when Britain ended the Mandate and left,’ he writes. The 1949 armistice lines, the borders Israel held until 1967, were the product of that war, and the Arab side calls the displacement the ‘nakba’ (tragedy).
Israel’s capture of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War is the moment from which the settlements question dates. Dann argues that the 1949 armistice did not produce a Palestinian state because the Arab side refused to accept the partition. In 1967, Israel allowed Jews to return to Gush Etzion, where a flourishing group of communities had been wiped out in 1947, and to Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, where the Jewish community had been wiped out in Arab riots of 1929. At the Cave of Machpela, an ancient building containing the tombs of Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, Jews were permitted to pray for the first time in 700 years, and the Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which spoke of Israel’s military withdrawal from some, not all, of the conquered territories in the context of a final peace agreement.
- After the First World War: The League of Nations adopts the Mandate for Palestine, which directs the British administration to “encourage… close settlement by Jews on the land.”
- 1948: Britain ends the Mandate; war begins after the UN partition plan; Israel declares independence.
- 1949: Armistice lines are fixed; Arab states call the displacement the “nakba.”
- 1967: The Six Day War; Israel captures the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights.
- November 22, 1967: The Security Council adopts UN Security Council Resolution 242, calling for withdrawal from “territories occupied in the recent conflict” in the context of a final peace agreement.
- 1967 to 2025: Israeli governments allow Jewish civilians to settle in the captured territories; the ICRC rules in private that this violates Article 49.
The Oslo Era and Gaza’s Disengagement
In 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords, the first formal agreement between the two sides. Dann writes that Israel ‘withdrew unilaterally from nearly all “Palestinian” cities, towns and villages and turned over vast tracts of land to the PA/PLO.’ The Wye and Hebron agreements followed in the years after.
Offers of Palestinian statehood, in Dann’s account, were rejected. The Second Intifada ran from 2001 to 2004. In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in what Dann calls ‘the Disengagement.’ He argues that the withdrawal produced the opposite of what its supporters promised: Gaza, in his reading, ‘became a bastion of Hamas.’ ‘Land for peace’ in this conflict, he writes, has meant ‘land for terrorism.’ That is a characterization, not a verdict, and it is the part of his argument that international mediators and most Israeli security officials have rejected.
Through this history, Dann argues, the international community has rewarded Palestinian rejection and Israeli withdrawal, and punished Israeli settlement. The pattern, in his reading, has moved the dispute from one over people to one over territory alone.
Why Dann Rejects the Two-State Solution
Dann’s policy recommendation is to extend Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, with civil and humanitarian rights for Arab residents but not full political rights. He pairs that proposal with the dismantling of UNRWA refugee camps, the resettlement of refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, and an end to ‘terrorism and incitement against Israel.’ He calls the two-state solution ‘not realistic or practical.’ A Palestinian state in the West Bank, he writes, ‘would be an existential threat to Israel.’
That recommendation is the part of the essay furthest from the international diplomatic mainstream. Major powers, the United Nations, and the Arab League continue to back a negotiated two-state solution, and the 2024-2026 normalization talks have not changed that consensus. The legal argument, in turn, has drawn support from some Israeli historians and legal scholars, and sharp criticism from the International Court of Justice, which has treated the ICRC’s reading as authoritative.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention say?
Article 49 has six paragraphs. Paragraph 1 prohibits the forcible transfer or deportation of protected persons from occupied territory. Paragraph 6 prohibits an occupying power from moving its own civilians into the territory it occupies. The remaining paragraphs address evacuations, notification of the protecting power, and detention in exposed areas.
Why does Dann say Israeli settlements are legal?
Dann argues that the ICRC’s reading of Article 49 depends on treating the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights as territory of a recognized sovereign, which he says they were not in 1967. He pairs that with UN Charter Article 80, which he reads as preserving the Mandate for Palestine’s recognition of Jewish settlement rights.
What is the Mandate for Palestine?
The Mandate for Palestine was the League of Nations instrument that placed Palestine under British administration after the First World War. Its preamble recognized a historical link between the Jewish people and Palestine, and its terms directed the British to facilitate close Jewish settlement on the land. The Mandate ended in 1948 when Britain withdrew.
What does UN Charter Article 80 say?
Article 80 is a savings clause in the UN Charter. It says nothing in the relevant chapter can be read to alter the rights of any state or people, or the terms of existing international instruments, including mandates. Dann reads it as preserving the Mandate’s settlement rights.
What did UN Security Council Resolution 242 require?
Resolution 242, adopted on November 22, 1967, called for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict, the termination of belligerency, recognition of sovereignty, freedom of navigation, and a ‘just settlement of the refugee problem.’ The text uses ‘territories’ rather than ‘the territories,’ and the dispute over whether withdrawal from all or only some of the captured land was required has been a central point of argument ever since.
Has the ICRC’s interpretation of Article 49 changed?
The ICRC’s 2025 commentary on the convention continues to treat paragraph 6 as a rule covering all occupied territory, with no carve-out for territory whose previous sovereign is not recognized. The commentary traces the paragraph’s roots to the post-Second World War trials of Nazi officials for the ‘Germanization’ of occupied territories.
Disclaimer: This article reports on a published opinion essay and the underlying legal and historical texts it references. It is not legal advice. The interpretation of international law, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and UN Charter Article 80, is contested by states, courts, and scholars. Statements attributed to Moshe Dann represent his own argument. Readers should consult qualified legal professionals for any matter touching international law. Figures and positions are accurate as of publication.
