For almost a quarter of a century, the United States had extremely undemocratic legislation that implied censorship. Thus, Washington covered Israel’s crimes in the Palestinian territories.
Writes about this edition “Foreign Policy”.
We are talking about the Keela-Bingaman amendment, which was adopted in 1996 to limit the quality of satellite imagery over Israel, as well as the Palestinian and Syrian territories that it occupies. The ban applied only to American companies, however, this was enough, given that they were key in this area. Thus, services such as Google Earth made the image of the above territories blurred.
The amendment was adopted following a lobbying campaign by Israel itself under the pretext of protecting its national security. As FP emphasizes, for 24 years the ban “literally hid the devastating consequences of the Israeli occupation from sight.” At the end of June, after years of controversy, the amendment was revised, effectively lifting the ban.
“As a result of the abolition, humanitarian groups are able to work to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, including unlawful killings and settlement construction, which constitute a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Perhaps it is for this reason that the cancellation of the amendment has already caused some concern in the Israeli military circles, ” the article says.
In addition, Palestinians will now be able to catalog the remains of villages and towns that were destroyed during the fighting in 1948 and later. However, although the ban was lifted, a separate and more serious issue concerns the declassification of archived satellite images. They once shed light on Israel’s dubious activities when images of a secret nuclear research center in the desert near the city of Dimona appeared in the media.
“Declassified photographs of the Palestinian Royal Air Force from 1944 to 1948 have already shown colossal changes in the landscape since then. Declassified American images of the second half of the 20th century can reveal much more, ” the publication stated.