The Israel-Palestine Conflict - Research Paper Example

The Israel-Palestine Conflict: No Peace Without Justice, No Justice Without Addressing The Roots of Injustice The time has come to end the suffering and the plight of millions of Palestine refugees in the homeland and the Diaspora, to end their displacement and to realize their rights, some of them forced to take refuge more than once in different places of the world. At a time when the Arab peoples affirm their quest for democracy – the Arab Spring – the time is now for the Palestinian Spring, the time for independence. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, 23 September 2011, before the United Nations The Israel Palestine conflict remains to be an unfolding narrative, the conclusion to which has yet to be determined. Generations upon generations of civilians have lived and died amidst this protracted war, victims of and witnesses to the seemingly limitless capacity of human beings for violence. The struggle for peace is indeed an aspiration that the whole world shares – and yet, history is rich with examples that tell us that peace without justice is an unsustainable project. The atrocities perpetrated in the context of the conflict must be accounted for, and there must be redress for the injustices wrought to the nameless and faceless victims. However, justice is not a one-size thing that fits all propositions. Efforts towards its introduction in a region as divided ethnically as Kosovo need to include clear-cut and streamlined efforts to address horizontal inequalities – defined by Stewart (137) as “inequalities among groups with shared identities – identities formed by religion, ethnic ties or racial affiliations, or other salient ways that bind groups of people together”. Certainly, this includes looking at the broad and multiplex power dynamics that underlie these identities and become the basis for the conferral or denial of economic, political or social privilege. This is of course exacerbated when set against the backdrop of a conflict economy. Kamphuis (185) describes a conflict economy as one “that leads to the breakup of administrative and social institutions, the flight of human capital through migration, and the destruction of infrastructure for education and health care” – the clear contextual backdrop of the Israel-Palestine crisis. There are also political complexities that come into play. Writers like Danny Rubinstein write that Palestinian nationalism is on the wane and that “about twelve thousand Palestinians from East Jerusalem have received Israeli citizenship” (1). But almost on a daily basis, we are besieged by news report on intensified “terrorist” attacks by Palestinian fighters. Indeed, it is hard to make a clinical assessment of the situation. I argue that investigating the extent to which horizontal inequalities were addressed may be done using the multiple dimensions of justice enumerated by Hellsten (79) as analytical tools or criteria – (1) justice as the establishment of public safety and individual security, securing the lives of civilians from acts of violence; (2) justice as reconciliation and redress for past grievances, embracing the concept of restorative justice; (3) distributive and social justice, which focuses on social and economic well-being on a more long term period, and (4) political justice, involving participation and inclusion is governance. This means that all these imperatives must be addressed and dealt with, rather than one criterion alone and sacrificing the rest, e.g. reconciliation at the expense of resource redistribution, economic growth at the expense of political participation, governance, without rectifying individual criminal responsibility. In countries fraught with sharply-drawn ethnic lines where political and economic privileges are denied or granted on the basis of ethnicity, satisfaction of the requirements of these dimensions of justice cannot take place without addressing horizontal inequalities. In a similar vein, aspiring to address horizontal inequality without looking at the variegated dimensions of justice results in strategies that are haphazard and unsustainable. Firstly, I argue that a multi-dimensional approach to justice is particularly crucial in situations fraught with horizontal inequalities, because it can act as a counter-check against tendencies to assess the violence as uni-directional and linear – i.e., one ethnic group is the thug and the other ethnic group represents victims. A justice approach that fixates itself singly on seeking redress for past grievances without looking at social, economic and political conditions would be in danger of focusing on high profile incidents and incidents that are covered in the media. In the Israeli-Palestine conflict, a website called If Americans Knew published a report in the year 2006 analysing the coverage of the Associated Press (AP) of the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. It had discovered that there was a correlation between the likelihood of a death being covered by the news wire agency and the nationality of the person who was killed, such that there was a greater likelihood that an Israeli death would be reported over a Palestinian death. To quote: In 2004, there were 141 reports in AP headlines or first paragraphs of Israeli deaths. During this time, there had actually been 108 Israelis killed (the discrepancy is due to the fact that a number of Israeli deaths were reported multiple times). During the same period, 543 Palestinian deaths were reported in headlines or first paragraphs. During this time, 821 Palestinians had actually been killed. The tendency of media to report Palestinian atrocities and downplay Israeli atrocities has been explored, but has not really prompted much action or rectification. In the same website, an article written by Alison Weir in 2009 has illustrated how the chronology of violence in the Israeli-Arab conflict has routinely been reversed to make it appear that the Palestinians have always made the first strike when in fact in several occasions the violence emanated from the Israelis but it was not reported. If a uni-dimensional sense of justice was used, then it would have been enough to impose punitive measures on the perpetrators who were identified; and because the media inevitably point to Arabs as the perpetrators, then individual criminal responsibility would be levied against them without looking at the social and political context that makes mainstream media and virtually the whole mainstream world ascribe acts of terrorism and violence to the Palestinian groups without looking first at whether or not Israel is not guilty of such violence as well. Of course, one must never justify terrorism, and this paper does not. The argument is that judgment of behaviour deemed “terrorist” behaviour must be done with an even hand – to look at the atrocities committed by both sides and assign liability based on an objective assessment of the situation. Secondly, let’s move to the issue of accountability and truth-seeking. I argue that a multi-dimensional justice approach invites a more comprehensive scrutiny of accountability frameworks and mechanisms in conflict situations marred by horizontal inequalities. This is because it goes beyond the lexicon of legal and criminal justice, and analyzes court systems and accountability frameworks with a frame of analysis informed by a keen understanding of social and economic inequities, as well as the continuously evolving reconfigurations that change the political landscape. For example, the issue of Palestinian dispossession is a long-standing issue in the conflict and has in fact been central to human rights interventions in such hotbeds as the Gaza strip. Harms and Ferry write: “Over the course of the war, approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes and into Arab-held Palestine or the surrounding Arab countries. The remaining Arab population was distributed between Israel (150,000), the West Bank (400,000) and Gaza (60,000)” (99). What appears to be lesser known is the degree to which these dispossessions were Zionist policy. Harms and Ferry demonstrate that Arab transfer was a key strategy by top-level Zionist leadership throughout history in its desire to build a Jewish state in territory that had Arab settlers (101). The book quoted David Ben-Gurion as saying, in 1937: “Transfer is what will make possible a comprehensive settlement programme. Thankfully, the Arab people have vast empty areas. Jewish power, which grows steadily, will also increase our probabilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale” (101). If only justice in its legal conception was used, it would not be able to take into account and analyze how this systematic policy of dispossession and transfer is in itself an act of reprehensible injustice for which redress must be made. Assessment of violence and human rights violations using default legal responses at best conceals a wide range of other forms of violence committed but are beyond the ambit of criminal prosecution, and at worst, legitimizes these forms of violence. (“If not declared illegal, then it must be legal. If legal, then it must be right.”) For example, structural violence, defined by Prontzos (300) as “deleterious conditions that derive from economic and political structures of power, created and maintained by human actions and institutions” are swept under the rug and forgotten, because transitional justice, wittingly or unwittingly, puts a premium on the kind of violence measurable through legal lenses. Likewise, gender violence or the systematic deprivation of privilege and opportunity to women that do not constitute “actionable wrong” in legal parlance are likewise made invisible. Moreover, the pitfall of measuring atrocity is that it has the unavoidable consequence of also measuring oppression: some classes of victims are privileged over another, some narratives are more valued than others, some left forgotten. In some cases this is an unfortunate technicality as, for instance, in legal jurisdictions wherein only State agents can be liable for torture, thus disenfranchising victims of non-State actors. In many, these are outcomes of asymmetrical power relations that underpin how justice is framed and dispensed. Clearly, given the current historical juncture, it is Israel that has the upper hand. Rule in an undated article writes: The process of colonization of the West Bank has gone on since its conquest by Israel in 1967, despite the sharp disapproval of the UN and most world opinion. The United States has occasionally expressed very quiet reservations, but throughout this time has continued to finance and protect the Israeli governments carrying out the colonization. No reasonable observer can doubt that this continuing projection of Jewish population and control into the vanquished territories tips the balance of power in favor of the colonists and makes any attempt to negotiate more humiliating for the vanquished. And yet colonization continues. Thus, it is difficult to conjecture a situation where justice dispensed and analyzed through legal means, or through the lens of international law, can gain much headway in addressing real issues. The balance of political forces still overwhelmingly favour Israel and this will have implications in legal remedies sought against Israeli violations. Finally, I argue that using the multi-dimensional frame of justice in areas of horizontal inequality can be of vital importance in that it conceives of the dimensions of justice both as outcomes and as tools – outcomes of successful reconstruction efforts, but more importantly, tools towards the more protracted process of addressing the painful ethnic divides that gave rise to the horizontal inequalities in the first place. It was Frerks and Goldewijk who said that “development approaches and development actors came to be seen as relevant in addressing these emerging and more diffuse security concerns as well as in providing sustainable solutions” (25). In a similar vein, addressing these security concerns arriving at sustainable solutions require understanding its root causes and unaddressed challenges. These solutions mean the provision of welfare-enhancing resources to those who are made most vulnerable to the conflict. Basic access to health care and education are routinely denied Palestinians. In another article that came out in the website called If Americans Knew, a devastating picture was painted of the daily life that Palestinians suffer: Israel’s occupation controls almost all aspects of Palestinian life. Children have difficulties getting to school, parents to work, the sick and injured to hospitals, because Israel has erected hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks obstructing Palestinian movement around their own country. The multiple dimensions of injustice faced by victims of ethnic disputes (deprived of health care, education and livelihood in the above case, but also perhaps access to a functioning judiciary, to the exercise of civil and political rights, to decent livelihood and resources etc.) require a response that takes this multiplicity and complexity in consideration. Conclusion The current conflict between Israel and Palestine appears to be bleak upon present examination. This does not mean that things will not get better or that future conditions will not give rise to more sustainable solutions. To divine the region’s future continues to be a challenge. Indeed, recent events and upheavals in the Arab world tell us that despotic regimes can fall like a deck of cards, with the right confluence of events and set of triggers. Who knows what the future holds for the conflict-wracked region of Israel and Palestine? What this paper concludes, however, is that there is merit in assessing post-conflict situations using the multiple dimensions of justice as enumerated above. By no means exhaustive, it still remains a satisfactory organizing handle particularly in areas where horizontal inequalities and ethnic-based inequities have, in large part, been responsible for the wretchedness of the war and the brittleness of current efforts towards sustainable peace. Perhaps the most important lesson to learn is that peace without justice is not sustainable. One cannot endeavour towards peace without rectifying the sins of the past and address historical grievances. One cannot move forward without looking backward. At the same time, calling for imposing justice without looking carefully and rigorously at the root causes of injustice will only result in palliative remedies that do not offer any long-term prospects for equitable and long-term solutions. Works Cited ‘Deadly Distortion: Associated Press coverage of Israeli and Palestinian Deaths.’ IfAmericansKnew.org. 26 Apr. 2006. Web. 31 Oct 2011. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/ap-report.html Frerks, Georg and Klein Goldewijk. 'Human Security: Mapping the Challenges'. Human Security and International Security. Ed. Georg Frerks and Klein Goldewijk. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2007. 21-34. Print. Harms, Gregory and Ferry, Tom. The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction. Second Edition. London: Pluto Press, 2008. Print. Hellsten, Sirkku. 'Ethics, Rhetoric and Politics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction: How can the Concept of Social Construct Help Us in Understanding how to make Peace Work?'. Making Peace Work: The Challenges of Social and Economic Reconstruction. Ed. T. Addison and T. Bruck. United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. 75-100. Print. Kamphuis, Bertine. 'Economic Policy for Building Peace'. Postconflict Development: Meeting New Challenges. Ed. G. Junne and W. Verkoren. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005. 185-209. Print. Prontzos, Peter. “Collateral Damage: The Human Cost of Structural Violence”, Genocide, War Crimes and the West: History and Complicity. Ed. A Jones. London-New York: Zed Books, 2005. 299-315. Print. Rubinstein, Danny. ‘One State / Two States: Rethinking Israel and Palestine.’ Dissent Magazine. Summer 2010. Web. 31 Oct. 2011. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3254 Rules, J. ‘The Crocodile and Captain Hook’. Dissent Magazine. 8 March 2011. Web. 31 Oct. 2011. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=457. Stewart, Frances. 'Policies Towards Horizontal Inequalities in Post-Conflict Reconstruction'. Making Peace Work: The Challenges of Social and Economic Reconstruction. Ed. T. Addison and T. Bruck. United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. 136-174. Print. “The Impact of the Conflict on Daily Life.” IfAmericansKnew.com. n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2011. Weir, Allison. ‘Killing Palestinians Doesn’t Count: Is a Ceasefire Breached Only When An Israeli is Killed?’ IfAmericansKnew.com. 29 Jan. 2009. Web. 31 Octo. 2011. Read More