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
