An uneasy symbiosis

by Jessica Montell

The relationship between human rights and conflict is a complex, multidimensional

one. With the conflagration of the conflict in the fall of 2000, human rights

violations increased dramatically in scale and intensity. In the past three years

and ten months, over 3,800 people have been killed, tens of thousands have been

wounded, thousands of houses have been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of

people have been placed under siege. The conflict has wrought poverty, humiliation,

hostility, and polarization. Though human rights are also violated in societies at

peace, such violations are endemic to a conflict like our own.

Yet human rights violations are not merely a result of the conflict, they are also a

cause. It is impossible to adequately explain the collapse of the Oslo process and

the explosion of violence in September 2000 without mentioning the expansion of

settlements, the daily humiliation of Palestinians by Israeli forces, and the

targeting of Israeli civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers. Though these

phenomena are generally seen through a political lens, they are all also human

rights violations.

It is rare to see the statistic I have cited above: over 3,800 people killed as a

direct result of this conflict since September 2000. Most casualty statistics

perpetuate a zero-sum mentality that compares Palestinian and Israeli deaths. This

macabre accounting of how many have been killed on "my" side versus "your" side

stands in stark contrast to the most basic tenet of human rights: the idea that

every human being has equal rights, and that the life of a Palestinian child, for

example, is of equal worth to the life of an Israeli child.

Recognition of the universality of human rights, however, does not obscure the

fundamental asymmetry of this conflict. Israel maintains a military occupation over

some 3.6 million Palestinians with an apartheid-like separation of Jews and

Palestinians, whereby one's rights, benefits and access to resources are determined

by one's national identity. This is not to say that Israelis are not victims of

human rights violations as well. Indeed, the targeted attacks on Israeli civilians

are almost universally recognized as war crimes. However, Israeli organizations like

B'Tselem focus on the actions of their own government, and their government

systematically violates Palestinian rights, while devoting enormous resources to

protect Israelis. Thus Israeli organizations are in the unique position of defending

the human rights of "the other" or even the enemy in this conflict.

It is clear that we will never enjoy full human rights in a situation of occupation

and conflict, and therefore resolution of the conflict is essential to protecting

human rights. This does not mean that there is an easy symbiosis between human

rights and conflict resolution. In fact, human rights violations are as frequently

justified in the name of conflict resolution as they are by the conflict itself.

Governments on the left and the right have persecuted the "opponents of peace,"

placing detractors in administrative detention, torturing them and deporting them.

One of the primary roles of the human rights community is to state unequivocally

that the ends cannot justify the means. Not even the lofty goal of resolving this

conflict and bringing peace to Israelis and Palestinians can justify violation of

fundamental human rights.

Human rights organizations must be actively involved in resolving this conflict.

Though we do not take a position on political issues, any diplomatic solution must

also accord with all sides' legal obligations. There is a utilitarian reason to

include human rights in conflict resolution: we learned from the Oslo process that a

peace process that ignores human rights violations is vulnerable at its core,

perhaps even doomed to failure. Yet human rights are also a moral imperative

regardless of their utilitarian merits.

It is therefore a mistake for diplomatic initiatives like the roadmap to treat a

settlement freeze, an end to house demolitions or lifting the siege on Palestinian

communities solely as confidence-building measures. These are legal obligations that

Israel must uphold regardless of any progress in negotiations.

The same is true of the separation barrier, Palestinian refugees, Israeli

settlements and the future status of Jerusalem - all these must be understood not

only as political issues, but also as issues implicating legal obligations that must

be respected. Just as human rights violations are a cause of conflict, no conflict

can be successfully resolved without taking human rights and international

humanitarian law into account.

- Published 2/8/2004 (c) bitterlemons.org. Used here with permission.

Jessica Montell is executive director of B'Tselem: the Israeli Information Center

for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.