The Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, to which the Palestinians are seeking to accede, defines humanitarian protections for civilians that occupying powers must enforce in conflicts.

On Tuesday, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas signed a request to join several UN agencies and ratify international treaties.

The first was to what is commonly known as the Fourth Geneva Convention, which was adopted on August 12, 1949 by a conference of 63 states.

It was the last of the four so-called Geneva Conventions that establish standards of international law for humanitarian treatment in war, defining rights of prisoners, establishing protections for the wounded and for civilians in and around conflict zones.

Its 159 articles lay down the obligations of signatory countries.

Article 27 stipulates that, in occupied territories, civilians must be protected at all times, notably against all acts of violence and intimidation.

Articles 49 prohibits occupying powers from forcibly deporting protected persons out of occupied territories or the transfer or deportation of its own civilian population into occupied territory.

They also ban the destruction of civilians' real or personal property, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.

Under Article 55, the occupying power must provide the civilian population, as far as possible, with food and medicines, and import these things if the resources of the occupied territory are insufficient.

Article 56 says the occupying power has the duty, "to the fullest extent of the means available to it" to "ensuring and maintaining... the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory."

Article 59 lays down that when the population of an occupied territory or part of it is not adequately supplied, the occupying power will accept and facilitate aid efforts.

There are currently 195 countries party to the convention.

Among them are Israel, which has never recognised its applicability to the occupied Palestinian territories but which agreed in 1967 to observe de facto the humanitarian aspects.