Let me help you, Shimon

From CNN's God's Jewish Warriors:

President Shimon Peres: The legal advisor of the Foreign Ministry (MFA) doesn't tell us how to defend our lives.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour: Are you saying Theodore Meron was wrong [in saying that the settlements post-1967 violated the Fourth Geneva Convention]?

SP: I don't know if he was right or wrong from a legal point of view; but he was wrong from a pragmatic point of view. Israel was under a steady attack all the time.

CA: So, just to help me understand this, for the Israeli leadership at the time, pragmatism triumphed over international law.

SP: What you call pragmatism was, in our eyes, —

CA: (Interrupting and pointing disrespectfully) You just said pragmatism.

SP: (Cool as a cucumber) Pragmatism in the sense of security, of defending our lives, yes.

Thankfully, Amanpour's embarrassing bias, lack of even the most basic knowledge of Middle Eastern history, and the overall worthlessness of the settler-bashing project called "God's Jewish Warriors" have been exposed by any number of watchdogs, media critics, and even fellow members of the media. The series on the whole, "God's Warriors", has been panned for the same reasons.

But this particular conversation was problematic for me, because Peres, who handled himself so well it was unclear as to whether he even knew who Amanpour was (lucky him), intimated that Meron's opinion, later proven to be incorrect, might indeed be true.

The truth is that, once upon a time, Peres — an intelligent, eminently likable, and experienced public servant — would never have answered the question this way, but he has taken the role of peacemaker and doesn't seem to want to offend the purveyors of popular opinion, whose latest fad is to blame the settlers and religious Zionists for, well, everything. (I'm anticipating the next JFK docudrama to lay out how Ariel Sharon ordered the Gaza disengagement after discovering the settlers' role in the assassination. Nevermind that Gaza wouldn't fall to Israel for another four years after the murder, facts and numbers don't bother these people.)

Here's how the conversation should have gone:

Christiane Amanpour: Are you saying Theodore Meron was wrong?

Shimon Peres: Yes, he was. And here's why: You see, strange lady, the British Mandate states that the government "shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land." The Mandate, as your CNN anti-Zionist programmers should have loaded onto the hard drive of your android brain computer, referred to the entirety of what is now Israel, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

Furthermore, you anti-religious interloper, the Mandate made clear that unless the nations that inherited Mandated property directly from the British Crown renounced their rights under the Mandate, the Mandated rights would continue under the new governments. Israel has not renounced its settlement rights, and, according to the Mandate, CNN "reporters" aren't permitted to do so for them.

Additionally, Professor Stephen Schwebel, former judge on the Hague’s International Court of Justice, wrote that since "The last legal sovereignty over the territories was that of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate which encouraged Jewish settlement of the land", calling the settlements "illegal" has no basis in international law.

CA: (Pointing angrily at Peres, in a huff) But what about UN Resolution 242? Doesn't it state that the evil Zionist occupiers should withdraw from all of the territories captured?

SP: (Pinching himself to make sure he is awake and this woman is for real) Um, no, it doesn't. former US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Eugene Rostow helped craft the resolution, and pointed out in an essay you should have read that the resolution was written the way it was for a reason.
The resolution doesn't state that Israel should withdraw from "all" territories, "the" territories, or "all the" territories. It states Israel should withdraw "from territories". It also makes clear that which territories Israel withdraws from is up to the Israeli and Palestinian governments to mutually agree upon.

CA: (Alternately jumping up and down and stomping on the floor) But doesn't the resolution explicitly state that, as occupiers, the Zionists are forbidden from wearing any head covering that conceals their horns?

SP: (Yawing — he was actually asleep this time, but was woken by all the jumping and stomping) No, it doesn't say that either.

CA: (Now eating her chair, foaming at the mouth, and screaming) But Israel is occupying the territories!

SP: (Looking around the room for Ashton Kutcher, who he is now certain is "Punking" him) Actually, no, and please keep your voice down, this is a civilized society. As former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote, the Geneva Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign."
Obviously, since there had been no "legitimate sovereign" in between British rule and Israeli rule, there could not possibly be an "occupation" — no one is being occupied.

Back to our friend Schwebel, who wrote in the American Journal of International Law:

"Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title."

So, since Egypt and Jordan had illegally occupied Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, prior to the 1967 war, Israel's claim over those areas is stronger than either of those countries'. Though, as we all know, Egypt and Jordan want nothing to do with those territories. One thing is for sure, according to international law, the territories are least of all Palestinian — no one involved has less of a claim to that land.

CA: (Now about two inches from Peres's nose and screaming in his face ceaselessly)...

SP: (Exiting with his bodyguards, leaving Amanpour screaming at the empty chair where Peres was sitting) This was fun.