Legal Acrobatics: The Palestinian Claim that Gaza is Still Occupied Even After Israel Withdraws

Oslo didn't create a Palestinian state, but it would be hard to argue that by the mid-1990s, with Arafat ruling the Palestinians, that the Palestinians were under Israeli military occupation.

Indeed, back in 1994, the legal advisor to the International Red Cross, Dr. Hans-Peter Gasser, proposed that his organization had no reason to monitor Israeli compliance with the Fourth Geneva Convention in the Gaza Strip and Jericho area, since the convention no longer applied with the advent of Palestinian administration in those areas.7 At best, the Palestinians could argue that Oslo placed them in an ambiguous legal position, since they themselves exercised most of the functions of government, while Israel only maintained a few residual powers.