Human rights litigation and the transition from policing to warfare: the case of Israel and its governance of the West Bank and Gaza in the Al-Aqsa Intifada

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between human rights NGOs and state/military policies in the case of Israeli organisations operating in West Bank and Gaza. The article focuses on a period of fundamental change in Israel's management of the West Bank and Gaza unfolding alongside the Al-Aqsa Intifada, a transition from a framework of policing to a framework informed by the logic of war. It argues that NGO litigation, in this case, aided broader legal/political shifts that drifted away from a human rights agenda. Based on the Israeli/Palestinian case, the article aims to contribute to scholarship critically reflecting on human rights NGOs' position vis-à-vis the state and broader geo-political processes of change.

Occupations in context – The cultural logics of occupation, settler violence, and resistance

“…Occupation language also provides a framework for Israel's denial of the fact of occupation (Shafir, 2017) and focuses attention on legal questions associated with Israel's responsibilities towards occupied populations, such as proportionality of force, rather than focusing attention on the legality of the occupation policy itself (see also Kauanui, 2018 on Hawaii). Judicial institutions operating under conditions of occupation, including both military and civilian court systems, contribute to the maintenance of state power by providing venues for individuals to seek redress for state harms while ultimately ensuring the operationalization of impunity for state perpetrators, the criminalization of dissent, and the legalization of the state's apparatus of control (Duschinski and Ghosh, 2017;Duschinski and Hoffman, 2011;Geva, 2017Geva, , 2019Hajjar, 2005). As Feldman summarizes, "Cases such as this reveal the limits of the law as a mechanism for effecting a serious change in occupation policy, let alone as a means to bring an end to an occupation" (2018: 1609).…”