Shoreshthe drift report · all case files
Case file

Legality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine

The title itself moved from a question to a verdict: the article once opened “The legality of the Israeli occupation” and now opens “Illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine”. Occupation mentions rose from 15 to 19; antisemitism fell from 5 to 3.
Read line by line and written up by hand.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-02. “occupation” appeared 19 times in this article's opening at its peak. Today the opening has none; the body has 19.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2025 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2025

IIlegal Israeli occupation of Palestine Not to be confused with Status of territories occupied by Israel in 1967 . Israel 's occupation of the Palestinian territories , which has continued since 1967 and is the longest military occupation in modern history, has become illegal under international law .1 This illegality encompasses the West Bank , including Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem , as well as the blockaded Gaza Strip , which remains to be considered occupied under international law despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement . Israel's policies and practices in the occupied West Bank, including the construction and expansion of Israeli settlements , have amounted to de facto annexation that is illegal under international law. It is a subject that has received much less attention than violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) that have occurred during the occupation. Multiple United Nations General Assembly resolutions have described the continuing occupation as illegal. The general thrust of international law scholarship addressing this question has concluded that, regardless of whether it was initially legal, the occupation has become illegal over time. Reasons cited for its illegality include use of force for impermissible purposes such as annexation , violation of the Palestinian right to self-determination , that the occupation itself is an illegal regime "of alien subjugation, domination and exploitation", or some combination of these factors. Eyal Benvenisti suggested that refusal by an occupier to engage in good faith with efforts to reach a peaceful solution should not only be considered illegal but as outright annexation. International law scholar Ralph Wilde states that "The common way of understanding the extended duration of the occupation... is a prolonged violation of international law". Israel denies occupying Palestine and maintains its presence is legal. On 20 October 2022, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report to the United Nations General Assembly, calling on the Security Council to end Israel’s "permanent occupation" and on individual UN member states to prosecute Israeli officials. The report found "reasonable grounds" to conclude that the occupation "is now unlawful under international law due to its permanence" and Israel's "de-facto annexation policies". Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid said the report is "biased, false, inciting and blatantly unbalanced" and called it "anti-Semitic". The International Court of Justice (ICJ) accepted a request from the United Nations (UN) for an advisory opinion on the Legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem . On 19 July 2024, the court found Israel's continued presence in Palestine to be illegal, citing Israeli policies that violate the Geneva Convention and amount to annexation. UCL Faculty of Laws . "Commission of Inquiry finds that the Israeli occupation is unlawful under international law" . ICJ opinion declaring Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories unlawful is historic vindication of Palestinians' rights , Amnesty International , 19 July 2024, Wikidata Q127606223 : CS1 maint: deprecated archival service ( link )

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 1293532837.
Today
“occupation” appeared 19 times in this article's opening at its peak. Today the opening has none; the body has 19. Read the current article and compare.
Oct '2320252026
antisemitism311
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

← back to the drift report