Swiss department of foreign affairs spokesman Pierre-Alain Eltschinger told AFP that the Palestinian Authority had declared itself party to the conventions on April 2nd.
This was registered formally by Switzerland on Thursday, he added.
The step is part of a new diplomatic drive by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, coming as peace talks with Israel are close to collapse.
Abbas said he had received a letter from the Swiss president confirming the registration, and praised it as "an historic day for the Palestinian people", a senior Palestinian official said.
The Palestinians had pledged to freeze all moves to seek membership in UN organizations and international conventions — a stepping stone to recognition of their hoped-for state — during the talks in return for Israel's release of veteran Arab prisoners.
Israel has, meanwhile, made a new bid to expand settlements in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.
The original Geneva Conventions were crafted in the 19th century under the auspices of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, and recast after the Second World War.
Over the subsequent decades, optional protocols were added to take into account the developing realities of war and its impact on civilians.
The Palestinians have also submitted requests to the United Nations to join 13 other international conventions and treaties, but the world body said on Thursday that the move was legal.
The treaties include the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, the convention on the rights of the child, the convention against torture and an anti-corruption accord.
PALESTINE
Palestinians sign up to Geneva Conventions
The Palestinian Authority has signed up formally to the Geneva Conventions, which set down the rules of warfare and humanitarian operations in conflict zones, the treaties' guardian Switzerland confirmed on Friday.
ISRAEL
Germany’s Chancellor Merkel warns on anti-Semitism ahead of Gaza protests
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday warned against any show of anti-Semitic or racist behaviour ahead of expected weekend pro-Palestinian rallies in the wake of days of fighting in the Middle East.
Updated: 23 May 2021 10:15 CEST
Several German cities saw pro-Palestinian demonstrations during the deadly 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip, prompting Merkel to issue a call for calm.
READ ALSO: Germany slams ‘anti-Semitic’ demos and Hamas ‘terrorist attacks’
“Those who bear hatred towards Jews in the street, those who incite racial hatred put themselves outside our Basic Law,” Merkel declared in her weekly podcast.
“Such acts must be punished severely,” she insisted.
Merkel noted that Germany’s constitution “guarantees the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. But it offers no place for attacks on people of a different confession, no place for violence, racism or denigration” of others and their beliefs.
German police made some 60 arrests last Saturday while some 100 officers were hurt as a pro-Palestinian rally in Berlin turned violent.
Some participants at marches in towns across Germany shouted anti-Semitic slogans, which Merkel blasted as “unacceptable”. Others burned Israeli flags
and, in one case, stoned the entrance to a synagogue.
More demonstrations in support of the Palestinians were scheduled for this weekend, in Berlin and in other cities.
On Saturday, a Jew from Berlin filed a complaint to say he had been attacked overnight by three unidentified men, police said.
The 41-year-old man, who was wearing a kippa at the time, said he was first insulted, then hit in the face, before his attackers fled the scene.
The authorities in Germany are worried about a resurgence of anti-Semitism from the far-right, notably since the October 2019 attempted attack against a
synagogue in the eastern city of Halle carried out by neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers.
The growing Jewish community in Germany numbers in the hundreds of thousands, many of them from the former Soviet Union.
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