Human Rights Watch (Israel and Palestine) on Common Rights and Law Violations

Omar Shakir is the Israel and Palestine Director for Human Rights Watch (Middle East and North Africa Division). Here we talk about rights and law violations, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: With regards to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict or issue, there are violations of international law on both sides. When these violations happen, what are common streams of international law in this conflict? How are they consistently violated?

Omar Shakir: Because Israeli authorities have occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since 1967, international humanitarian law applies to the situation on the ground. International humanitarian law, otherwise known as the law of war or the law of occupation, provides one layer of protection to the occupied Palestinian population.

But, of course, in addition to international humanitarian law, international human rights law applies to the Israeli authorities, but also to the Palestinian authorities vis-a-vis their own populations and vis-a-vis Israelis. 

Different bodies of law will apply depending on the particular circumstances. For example, when there are armed hostilities, missiles fired back and forth between the Gaza Strip and Israel, international humanitarian would apply.

It would also perpetually apply because Palestinians are protected persons. Sometimes, a particular event might trigger a different body of law. For example, when Palestinians in Gaza are protesting or even in Ramallah are protesting, and there are Israeli forces there policing the demonstration, whether across the fence with Gaza or in Ramallah, the body of law that would govern would be human rights law because that body of law applies to policing situations.

So, different bodies of law will govern. When we’re talking about the Palestinian Authority dealing with its own citizens, for example, arrests or conditions of detention, that would be governed by international human rights law, because it is the obligations of a power that has some authority over people within its jurisdiction. 

Jacobsen: For those who may hear the basic phrase of “right to self-defense,” what does this mean in the context of the conflict? How is this typically applied in the media? But then, also, how is this properly applied within a legal context?

Shakir: The UN Charter has a prohibition against using force, except as a means to self-defense. There have been different analyses over the years on what exactly constitutes self-defense. Some argue this means only attacking when one has been attacked. Others have stretched the meaning to pre-emptive attacks at different levels of distance from imminence.

There are two main governing bodies of law. There’s what you call jus ad bellum and jus in bello.

Jus ad bellum concerns the legality of using force in general. Then there is jus in bello, which governs how force is used in the context of conflict. Human Rights Watch itself focuses mostly on the latter. We don’t generally make pronouncements on whether or not war, occupation, or the beginning of hostilities is or isn’t justified.

 Jus ad bellum is a body of law that’s generally been underdeveloped.

Most of our focus is on when force is used: is the use of force legitimate regardless of whether the war, occupation, or hostilities itself was justified?

Most of HRW’s focus is on research pertaining to abuse of all parties pertaining to the laws of war, which is, in essence, jus in bello versus jus ad bellum – which would concern a decision whether to go to war or ignite hostilities is itself justified. 

Jacobsen: For those organizations like HRW, and others, covering several sides of the issue in terms of human rights violation and breaches of international law. You can get bad press from all sides. 

You might get credit from one side for critiquing one side in terms of application and human rights violations and pointing out breaches of international law, and vice versa.

What would be a proper response to those who may be critiquing what seems to me like a very legitimate work that you’re doing in terms of having a comprehensive perspective in the application of human rights and international law?

Shakir: Certainly, one of the most common critiques of HRW in the nearly 100 countries that we operate in across the world is one side or the other claiming that we underfocused on the other side’s abuses while focusing on them. That we have a bias.

I used to cover Egypt for HRW. When we were covering the abuses of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood when they were in power in 2012-2013, we were accused of being against them.

Then when there was a coup, and the military government was gunning down protestors and arbitrarily arresting thousands, we were accused of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is a similar pattern everywhere. Israel-Palestine, we have seen the same dynamic. The Israeli government says that we are biased against them.

When we released reports, as we have done for more than two decades, on arbitrary arrests by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, or the unlawful use of force by them, we are accused by of being part of an agenda of Israel and the United States to undermine them.

Even in the last year, we have seen accusations from both Israelis and Palestinians. I think the way to respond to that is to be methodologically consistent, to use the same tools, and to document the abuses of all parties. 

That doesn’t mean that we have a ledger and then count how many reports we issued on each party’s abuses to make sure that it is equal, because human rights abusers are not equal in the amount of the abuse that they inflict on the others.

But it means that you bring the same tenacity and bring the same seriousness and rigour and approach, and use the same tools, to measure abuse, and the consistently reach the same conclusions for the same abuses in different contexts.

That’s the work that we try to do in the nearly 100 countries that we operate in, including every country in the Middle East and North Africa.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Omar.

Photo by Benjamin Suter on Unsplash