Talking in Ramallah about Law, Justice, and Reconciliation
It’s been days since my last blog entry, and my list of unwritten postings grows longer. Most of what would have been my free time was taken up by writing the paper I presented, in unfinished form, Tuesday afternoon. Since then I’ve finally finished it, more or less, and it’s now on my website. It’s too long to post here, but what follows are some pieces of it.
The occasion for the paper was a Legal Encounter organized by the Birzeit University Institute of Law, where I’ve spent the past week doing a series of workshops for five researchers on selected topics in psychology and law. The newly formed interdisciplinary Law and Society research unit is beginning a two-year research project on Legal Reform and the Process of Decolonization and State-Building in Palestine. That’s not going to be so easy to accomplish, but the researchers are doing a good job identifying a long list of difficult issues that will need to be addressed for a Palestinian legal system to function. I don’t think the issues will be easily resolvable, however, given Palestine’s internal disarray and continued occupation, so I look forward to seeing the research that develops.
As requested by my Birzeit University hosts, I presented this talk to generate discussion. It did do that. There were only about 15 people in the audience, mostly from the university, but they represented a pretty wide range of views. At one end was someone who advocated ending all religious affiliations in order to reduce conflict.
At the other was a student whose language generated an immediate yanking away of his microphone by the moderator, who said no one could talk like that in a university discussion. The student had apparently started insulting Israelis, Jews, and me as soon as he began– I’m not really sure, since this was in Arabic and the simultaneous translator got into trouble when three people began shouting at the same time, so he just started describing for me what was going on. I was told later the student said something about Israelis being monkeys, but no one really filled me in on the details. For the remaining 10 minutes or so of the discussion the student glared steadily at me in a way that made me look behind my back when I left the building.
Another audience member, one of the researchers I’ve been working with all week, also heatedly criticized the whole notion of reconciliation, but at least she did it in a reasonable way. Her main point was that it’s unjust to expect people to share their land with those who stole it, an issue obviously needing a lot more discussion.
Otherwise the post-presentation discussion was pretty academic, with a lot of good questions and comments and enough interest in talking it through to make me glad I gave the paper.
Still, that glare stayed with me for a spell. That this all went on during the past week’s Fatah-Hamas tension, some of which led to shooting in Ramallah on Friday and Sunday, added escalated my adrenaline flow.
It’s not so easy here, especially for Palestinians.
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Law, Justice, and Reconciliation in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Abstract
A critical social psychologist, an outside observer of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, assesses the roles of law, justice, and different forms of reconciliation. Although law can sometimes help achieve justice, it is less likely to resolve entrenched conflict. Justice is crucial but complex. Reconciliation between conflicting parties cannot succeed if the effort is limited to the kinds of understanding and empathy possible through even-handed dialogue. Instead, reconciliation must incorporate a commitment to take justice into account.
Excerpts
Efforts to resolve the long and complex conflict between Palestinians and Israelis typically emphasize some combination of law, justice, and reconciliation. During today’s Birzeit Legal Encounter I’d like to make several loosely connected comments and ask a number of questions about what I see as some of the difficult choices facing Palestinians. These comments and questions reflect both my academic interests in critical social psychology, primarily at the intersection of psychology and law, and my status as an outsider. Both of these, I hope, can sometimes help identify problematic assumptions that those who are enmeshed in a situation sometimes take for granted, even though I have less first-hand knowledge of the conflict’s complexities than do those of you living here in Palestine.
The points I focus on today are not the only relevant factors, and in the long run they may not be the most important, but they are impossible to ignore. Other concepts are also part of the discussion: power, rights, history, tradition, religion, compromise, peace. Politics, the use of power, underlies it all, and throughout this discussion I use a lens that is simultaneously political, psychological, and personal. I aim not to resolve issues for you but to generate discussion of a variety of relevant issues.
So what stands out in this landscape of law, justice, and reconciliation, or perhaps (as I’ll soon suggest) law, justice, and three kinds of reconciliation? Several questions are obvious. What is the connection between law and justice? Between justice and reconciliation? Is law a useful tool to bring about justice? Is justice the only or most important goal? Is resolution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, with roots more than a century old, possible? And what can be attained in light of events just this past week, which clarify all too well the lack of Palestinian consensus about priorities and methods?
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Can reconciliation mean more than simply the absence of war and a patently unfair compromise that institutionalizes injustice? If so, what does it require?
One answer is “Peace with Justice.” A common slogan among activists, Peace with Justice is a counter to those for whom peace alone is everything. Clarifying that meaningful, long-term, stable peace requires resolution of past grievances as well as of current issues, Peace with Justice insists that justice cannot be ignored, that any compromise must be principled and honest, not a muddle forced upon those too weak to resist.
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You all know more directly than I that the struggle in which you are engaged requires difficult choices. Is your goal simply a state with a flag? A reversal of 40 years of occupation, of almost 60 years of division? How much justice will you demand, how little will you accept? Is reconciliation possible if justice is imperfect? Is compromise acceptable, or is it only a means to something else? I can only begin to imagine what it must be like to approach these questions not from an academic world thousands of miles away but inside your own communities torn by conflicting impulses and allegiances. Today’s news from Gaza, like last Friday’s here in Ramallah, makes Palestinian fissures hard to ignore. How you will reach reconciliation among yourselves is itself a formidable challenge.
It’s easier to get a sense of what’s wrong with assumptions held by the other party in this conflict. Israel, as the dominant power, must reach deep into its bag of ideological tools to maintain support for policies most of its own citizens, I suspect, would find appalling if they were able to see them afresh. But they do not see them afresh. The lens through which most Israelis gaze is distorted. Distorted by officially encouraged fear. Distorted by nationalist appeals based on cultural myths that convert the Jewish experience of victimhood into justification for victimizing others………..
If the fundamental question facing Israelis is whether to be a Jewish state or a democratic state, it seems to me the fundamental question facing Palestinians is how to prioritize justice and reconciliation. Or at least that would be the fundamental question if either were readily attainable. Israel’s dismissal of both reconciliation and justice has meant Palestinians have not yet had to resolve this difficult choice.
I hope that choice is soon yours to make. And I wish you luck.
