How do you find out what the law actually is?
An Israeli friend would like to visit the West Bank but is concerned that it’s illegal and wonders about the consequences. But since many Israelis do go to the West Bank without any apparent consequences, the question my friend sent me today is this: How do you find out what the law actually is?
There are some areas of law and practice where that’s a reasonably easy question to answer, but even in those more clear-cut spheres the law on the books does not always match the law in court, which can be distant still from the rules used by police and prosecutors. In more complex arenas it can be bewildering just to find out what “the law” is, even when ignoring whether and when and how and on whom it is, or isn’t, enforced.
Kafka’s story Before the Law presents one effort to sort it out, at least as Kafka looked at the function of gatekeepers. This discussion even includes a relevant photo of mine illustrating a U.S. gatekeeper.
To describe the law as Kafkaesque helps us anticipate what to expect, but it doesn’t help figure out whether or not an Israeli is allowed to visit Ramallah. I asked this question in my class yesterday (Psychology, Law, and Justice, at Ben Gurion University in the Negev), but the students knew only that it was illegal, probably by military order. Another former BGU student told me later that when she visited Ramallah a few years ago, a soldier at the checkpoint on the way back to Jerusalem smiled while writing down her ID number; when asked why she was keeping a record, the soldier said “It’s illegal to go there.” But there have been no repercussions.
Military orders in occupied territory frequently seem to have little clarity and, according to my students, change frequently without notice. This is confusing for Israelis who’d like to see for themselves what’s going on in the West Bank, without official or mainstream media interpretations. Many Israelis do, in fact, enter the West Bank, sometimes straightforwardly through official checkpoints, as in the case of the former BGU student, sometimes more clandestinely but fairly openly, as in the case of the dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of Israelis who protest at Bil’in every Friday. I don’t know how often Israel enforces the law (if it is a “law”), or how serious any punishment might be. I don’t know whether the military order is clear but enforcement is spotty, or whether the military order simply gives discretion to whatever soldier is at the checkpoint that day.
If this is confusing for Israelis, and disappointing for those who’d like to take a 20-minute taxi ride to Ramallah, it’s incredibly destructive to the daily lives of Palestinians who have no way of knowing what Israeli military law is, or whether it will be enforced, when they simply want to move about from one place in the West Bank to another. Going to work, to school, to a doctor’s office, to visit relatives — this is sometimes difficult, sometimes impossible, always unpredictable.
A few days ago one of my email lists brought an account written by a Palestinian college student in Jenin who set off with a group of students to attend a technology conference in Ramallah. The trip is less than an hour, but it took more than seven for all three carloads to arrive because of roadblocks, checkpoints, and apparently arbitrary decisions to allow some students to go through but not others.
SInce, in the end, all were allowed through, it was never clear why any were stopped at all. What were the orders? What was the law behind the orders? Were the soldiers given instructions they interpreted differently? Were they told to always turn some people back? To do whatever they felt like? I don’t know. I also don’t know how to find out, but I’m curious.
In my class here in Beer Sheva my students have identified difficult areas of Israeli law, dealing with family issues, individual rights, and more. That’s the case too at Birzeit University in Ramallah, where I’ll spend a week or more next month. I’ll be working with researchers at the Institute of Law’s Law and Society Department who are trying to spur legal reform as part of the dual projects of de-colonization and state-building. Their challenge is immense, but they too are dealing with some of these same basic questions. Not only do they have to build their legal system amidst the background of unpredictable Israeli military law, they also have to reconcile different legal traditions and sort out the appropriate sphere for traditional customary religious law. Israel has been trying to do this for 58 years, and still doesn’t have it resolved. I hope it doesn’t take as long in Palestine.
November 14th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Actually, we cannot enter the occupied territories in Gaza. as for the west bank, you are “free” to enter, but the Major General can decide (without your knowledge) to close the area.