MIDDLE EAST: Israel's top legal official has urged the government to consider formally adopting the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is designed to protect people living under occupation.
According to some Israeli legal experts, formal acceptance could require Israeli courts to reconsider the legality of the entire Jewish settlement enterprise in the territories - which is already viewed as illegal by much of the international community.
The attorney-general's radical recommendation, if adopted, would reverse a policy Israel has followed since it captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war. It is contained in a report for Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon commissioned in the wake of the International Court of Justice ruling against Israel's security barrier in the West Bank.
It reflects concern in the Israeli legal establishment that the country may face sanctions in the wake of that ruling, and so needs to show its commitment to humanitarian law.
In the same vein, and following intervention from its own supreme court, Israel is re-routing parts of the security barrier closer to the pre-1967 border. The Israeli Defence Ministry has issued a report urging that Israeli soldiers at roadblocks in the territories be retrained and held to a behavioural code to prevent abuses.
Recent weeks have seen a spate of new abuse allegations against soldiers at the checkpoints, which have been manned at dozens of locations across the territories as part of Israel's increasingly effective efforts to thwart Palestinian suicide bombers.
Israel has hitherto refused to formally acknowledge that the 1949 convention is binding on its presence in the territories, arguing that the West Bank and Gaza were not "occupied" by Israel in the 1967 since there was no internationally accepted sovereign power there at the time.
In its ruling against the security barrier in July, the international court in The Hague essentially dismissed the question of prior sovereignty as irrelevant.
Attorney-general Mr Menachem Mazuz is urging that the government "thoroughly examine" the question of formal acceptance ahead of UN sessions in September on the legality of the barrier.
Ms Yafa Zilbershats, an expert on international law at Tel Aviv's Bar-Ilan University, said formal acceptance would not radically change the reality since, in practice, Israel did apply the convention's humanitarian provisions.
But Yuval Steinitz, a leading member of Mr Sharon's Likud party, said it would weaken Israel's claims to at least part of the West Bank.