The birth of the human rights movement in the Arab world was not a
simple matter. The first human rights group, the Arab Human Rights
Organization, defined itself, from its inception, as a humanitarian
group, making great efforts to highlight that it was not a
political organization hiding behind a legal profile, as the Syrian
sociologist, Borhan Ghaloun insisted (Abdella, 1996). For this
reason, the organization chose Geneva as its temporary headquarters
and for years had no offices actually in the Arab world. It wasn't
until 1983 that it established a head office in Cairo, and its
formal and legal presence date only from mid-1999. The movement
then spread throughout the Arab World (with the exceptions of
Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia).
In Palestine, the human rights movement is predominantly left wing,
mirroring the trend in the rest of the Arab world, while
organizations are also characterized by a lack of individual
members. This stems from a fear of state interference, as is the
case in Egypt (for the Egyptian Human Rights Organization) and in
Tunisia (Human Rights League). Nevertheless, the movement has not
been able to find a substitute for individual membership to open
the movement to the general public through volunteers and involving
individuals in the organization.
Genesis of the Idea of Human Rights in Palestine
The idea of human rights is a relatively recent one, developing
towards the end of the 1970s. Before that, few in Palestine had
acknowledged the importance of the international community; it was
viewed with suspicion and considered an Israeli tool. Raja Shehada
and Jonathan Kuttab established Al Haq, the first human rights
organization (HRO), in 1979, as a branch of the International
Commission of Jurists. Both men are Palestinian-American.
Initially, some activists were suspicious of Al Haq, wondering
whether it was a branch of the CIA, while many other leftists
perceived human rights as a form of cultural imperialism, in the
service of Western interests. Al Haq's objectives have evolved as
part of the broader metamorphosis and development of the idea of
human rights in Palestine. The organization has a long history
distributing reports to the international community on issues
ranging from administrative detention to expulsions. Since 1985,
the organization has observed and recorded human rights violations
and offered legal advice. From 1985-97, Al Haq also focused on the
effect of the occupying force on law and order in the West Bank.
Today it is a known and respected organization in the local
community.
The first Intifada served as a useful alibi for many political
activists in Palestine to establish human rights centers. They were
surprised by the legal form of the human rights discourse: the
neutral vocabulary, and the labeling of Palestinian and Israeli
victims as "killed person." The Information Center on Human Rights,
(part of the Arab Study Society based in Orient House) and the Gaza
Center for Rights and Law were the first centers to be established
after Al Haq. Raji Sorani then co-founded the Palestinian Center
for Human Rights, and a number of other centers were set up,
including the Mandela Institute for Political Prisoners (which
changed its name after the arrival of the PNA to Mandela Institute
for Prisoners), Dameer, The International Movement for the Defense
of Children and LAW.
In general, HROs are responsible for following up human rights
violations, Israeli violations in particular; organizing visits and
providing material and moral assistance to Palestinian prisoners in
Israeli and Palestinian jails; monitoring and disclosing news of
torture, health and social rights violations and finally,
publicizing information about closures imposed by the Israeli
occupation of the Palestinian territories. Many of these
organizations are able to operate clear programs and action plans
because of the core funding they receive.
Unlike other sectors, donors provide core funding, long-term
support and capacity-building grants to Palestinian HROs. This has
had a tremendous impact on the performance of these groups. Core
funding allows them to develop technical expertise, credibility and
a long-term strategy. It also enables them to take on costly
activities such as litigation. A court-based strategy has been used
extensively to defend the rights of Palestinian Jerusalemites, as
well as to generate community support and raise awareness.
During the first decade of the establishment of Palestinian HROs,
there was a lack of parity in the way human rights principles were
applied. Many HROs did not criticize the murder of Palestinians by
other Palestinians. While Al Haq denounced the killing of
collaborators as contravening the right to life, others such as the
Information Center remained silent. Then, during the Iraq-Kuwait
war, many HROs were not convinced the Fourth Geneva Convention
should be applied to this conflict. Nationalist and patriotic
motives underpinned the judgments taken by these HROs, contrary to
the notion of human rights as conceived by the international
community and the application of legal-juridical-bureaucratic
standard.
Today, almost all Palestinian HROs have developed a clearer
position on the killing of collaborators. They consider the
continued use of the death penalty cruel and inhumane. However,
some of the HROs adopt a softer stance: One contests the absence of
the right of appeal for the accused collaborator - not their
fundamental right to life. Another condemns acts of collaboration
that harm the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation,
however, its position on the death penalty for collaborators is
unclear, and calls only for a fair trial. This represents a
divergence from the global human rights agenda. Today, the
Palestinian human rights discourse sways between positivism and
politics. By way of comparison, the majority of the HROs denounce
the death penalty only when the trial concerns political
prisoners.
Palestinian HROs are respected by their international counterparts,
and their work has impact not only in the international arena but
also in the Israeli one. The cooperation between Israeli and
Palestinian organizations has been very fruitful at times. For
instance, the Israeli organization B'Tselem has more progressive
views than those of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch,
in terms of Israel's responsibility to apply the Fourth Geneva
Convention in the Occupied Territories. "The refusal of the Israeli
government to recognize this Convention's applicability to the
Occupied Territories is a dangerous evasion from its obligation as
a member of the international community," states a B'Tselem report.
However, B'Tselem's stance on the annexation of East Jerusalem is
at times unclear; it uses the term "Jewish neighborhoods" when
referring to Jewish settlements in Jerusalem, conjuring up a
comparison with Arab neighborhoods.
Another issue Palestinian HROs diverge on is the human rights
violations committed by the PNA. Bassem Eid, the head of
Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, explained that the
creation of his new Palestinian HRO was necessary because some
segments of the human rights community in Palestine were treating
PA violations differently from those committed by Israel. For
example, when a recent Amnesty International report on the PNA was
released on December 2, 2002, journalists approached the PHRMG
because other HROs declined to comment - despite the fact that
Amnesty's report was based partly on these organizations'
research.
The lack of attention directed beyond the legal realm is also an
area of weakness among Palestinian HROs. The work conducted by
these groups could be more effective if it reached beyond a narrow
legal audience. This objective could be achieved through the
publication of reports and research, allowing information and
high-quality analysis to nourish and stimulate public discussions
about legal questions.
Palestinian HROs have increasingly become guided by non-partisan
principles and professionalism; they defend the rights of all
persons and groups, regardless of the political affiliation or
ideological orientation of the victims. However, this is a general
observation, and in practice some of them still retain biased or
partisan elements, normally within their recruitment procedures.
Additionally, HRO studies and research into human rights violations
are often empirical and lack in-depth analysis. Some of the more
interesting and analytically rigorous studies do not list the
author's name, such as the Law report entitled The Dormant Right:
the Continuing Violation of the Right of Return (Law, 2001). But
even in this paper, the position sways between a politicized
version of human rights and nationalist posture.
Here, we should be very clear that the dichotomy between the
legal-juridical-bureaucratic standard and the politicized position
is not synonymous with the dichotomy of universal versus
nationalist. We believe that the human rights discourse does not
rely on abstract reasoning or logic. It hides a political
sensibility. On the one hand, there is no pure, universal idea of
human rights. On the other hand, not all the politicized discourse
of Palestinian HROs is necessarily a nationalist one. Human rights
are socially and politically constructed, in the sense that, "ideas
and practices in respect of human rights are created, recreated and
instantiated by human actors in particular socio-historical
settings and conditions," (Stammers, 1999: 1).
In the Palestinian context, the difference between a nationalist or
politicized judgment by human rights activists is not always clear.
Does one consider the refusal of certain Palestinian HROs to
denounce Jordan's occupation of the West Bank before the 1967 War
as a politicized posture or a nationalist one? If one considers
international law, then indeed, Jordan was an occupying power. But
listening to the Palestinian population, that is not the case.
Sometimes a politicized discourse hides a lack of professionalism;
for example, we noticed communiqués in which a reference to
international law is made without mentioning which one it is, and
at other times, the structure of the argument remains undeveloped.
Examining the communiqués of HROs in Palestine, we did not
find any errata or nuancing of previous communiqués, as we
find in those of other organizations. Does this mean that they do
not make mistakes? At times there is also an absence of attention
to detail or context. For example, in an incident in which an
Israeli car killed a Palestinian child, the communiqué
identifies it as a settler car, without evidence that it was in
fact driven by a settler. Generally, few of the communiqués
use the word "alleged", even when the circumstances surrounding the
event are unclear. One also finds instances of exaggeration, such
as the use of the word "massacre" when only a few individuals have
been killed.
HROs, Culture and Social Movement
On the whole, most HROs in the Palestinian territories have taken
on the role of providing reports and press releases on human rights
violations either by the Israeli forces or the PNA. However, very
little effort has been directed at developing a "human rights
culture" at grassroots level. Human rights are approached in a
juridical sense as the ends, and not the means, of social and
political struggle. Two central factors have restricted the
influence and role of Palestinian human rights groups. Firstly, the
work conducted by these organizations is often approached as the
concern of a few activists; little attention is directed at
developing a culture of human rights. Human rights education is
important and rather than being addressed at a narrow "target
group" through informal education programs, it should be
incorporated into the school system. Civic Forum and the
Palestinian Center for Peace and Democracy have run many informal
education programs through workshops and summer schools. However
the technical emphasis of their approach represents a drawback.
Educating people about human rights through one time workshops,
without forming a long-term relationship with the individuals,
inevitably reduces the impact of the program. HROs therefore cannot
escape the need to develop some form of membership structure.
Badil, the Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee
Rights represents an interesting case; the organization has created
a structure called "Friends of Badil" to maintain a relationship
with the refugee community.
Secondly, there is also an absence of an "action plan" to extend
the struggle for human rights from international tribunes to the
streets. Mass mobilization represents an important asset for human
rights advocacy work; mass support would intensify pressure on the
PNA and the Israeli occupation forces to respect human rights. It
is true that mobilizing the general population behind human rights
principals is not an easy enterprise. The deep sense of insecurity
and profound distrust of the international community among the
Palestinians is one of the obstacles inhibiting the emergence of a
human rights culture at the popular level. This distrust is
compounded by the reliance of Palestinian HROs on foreign donors
for funding.
In addition to this, the Palestinian human rights movement has
neglected women's issues in its agenda. One could argue that this
has happened because of the proliferation of women organizations,
but it is also possible to envision cooperation between human
rights groups and women's organizations. Women's groups recognize
the importance of strengthening their link with the human rights
movement (Abu Nahleh, 1999), but at the practical level, one rarely
finds joint communiqués between the two movements. The only
notable exception is Al Haq, which has released two publications on
women's issues. One of them is the proceedings of the conference on
"Women, Justice and Law" that was held in Jerusalem in September
1994. (See Rashmawi, et al.: 1995[in Arabic]) This conference was
exclusively attended by women (ibid: 15). When one of the sessions
was headed by a man, one of the participants protested (Rashmawi,
1995: 127 [in Arabic]).
The human rights movement's disregard for women's issues in turn
reflects a lack of cooperation and alliance building between civil
society groups. While one understands that professionalization and
specialization has led to organizations designing their mandate as
exclusively "human rights," this does not explain the absence of
cooperation with other actors, especially unions and political
parties.
Although the human rights movement emerged as a proxy of the
political parties, and maintains a sort of allegiance to them, it
has become the expression of the personal leadership within the
organizations. Local staff members, for example, are not greatly
involved in writing studies and communiqués, it is generally
foreign interns and volunteers who carry out this work. This
reinforces the personal power of the head of the NGO.
Conclusion: Palestinian HROs, a "Voice" Model
Despite the universal language and frame of reference used to
locate human rights and anchor it as a global agenda, both the
debate on, and the application of, human rights have strong
emotional and normative characters.
The Palestinian HROs possess an anti-hegemonic discourse that
resists, or at the very least contests, the way human rights have
been framed in the global agenda. While international HROs locate
their work within legal-juridical-bureaucratic standards,
Palestinian counterparts are skeptical of this discourse and they
acknowledge its politicization. In his autobiography, Nelson
Mandela recalls how, during his career as a lawyer and activist, he
evolved, "from having an idealistic view of the law as a sword of
justice to a perception of the law as a tool used by the ruling
class to shape society in a way favorable to itself."
In a communiqué released on April 13, 2001, the Arab members
of the Euro-Mediterranean network of human rights identified the
principal challenge to the notion of the universality of human
rights as the politicization of human rights and the double
standards employed by Western governments and institutions rather
than cultural relativism; this is exemplified in the way Israel has
not been held accountable for its gross human rights
violations.
This situation begs the question: are we all in fact guided by the
same universal principles and values? Are we all covered by the
same human rights protection mechanisms? Theoretically the answer
may be yes, but the reality on the ground provides a different
picture. This jeopardizes the efficacy of most human rights
mechanisms. It does not mean they are necessarily bad or good
things: It depends on how the NGO discourse combines the reading of
the law and the reading of events. Some communiqués show
weakness in their structural statement and are politically
overdone; others are silent on certain issues. The position
vis-à-vis the collaborators is a very tricky and peculiar
issue in the context of a national liberation movement. While some
dare to denounce capital punishment as a violation of the right to
life, others only demand a fair trial.
In this respect, the second Intifada polarized the Palestinian
HROs. Two reactions were observed: The first position is that the
Palestinian human rights discourse should be closely compatible
with the international discourse. The other position is that human
rights issues cannot be disconnected from the deeply political
context of the occupation, and in which case, their role is to
expose and demystify the discourse and practices of international
HROs. Consider the UN Commission on Human Rights meeting held in
Geneva in October 2000. Palestinian HROs mobilized themselves and
participated in the meeting. Two trends were observed among the
Palestinian participants: some wanted a soft declaration to gain
European support during the vote, while others wanted a strong
statement (i.e., accusing Israel of war crimes and crimes against
humanity). The second group influenced the decision.
The same internal division between Palestinian human rights groups
was observed at the Third International Conference of the Human
Rights Movement in the Arab World, held in Rabat, which dealt with
the Future of the Palestinian Refugees under the Current Political
Settlement. The majority of the human rights groups at the
conference chose a strongly political statement, calling on the
League of Arab States to take the necessary practical measures to
expel Israel from the UN. This statement highlighted Israel's
violation of one of the conditions for the acceptance of its
membership of the UN; its failure to implement UN resolution 194
requiring the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes and
the payment of compensation to them. The statement also called for
a freeze on Israel's membership of all UN agencies until it accepts
the Palestinian right of return. Some of the groups at the
conference, including one of the Palestinian HROs, opposed this
arguing it was unrealistic and therefore unhelpful. When we asked
this Palestinian HRO, why it felt this position was unrealistic,
the head of the group referred to the international HROs' agenda.
Based on this, one can ask, for an agenda to be "realistic", must
it fall in line with the international agenda as defined by
international NGOs or Western governments, and in turn is this what
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