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  • Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: Legacy and Politics
  • Brian Walsh (bio)
Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: Legacy and Politics, by Ilan Peleg (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1995), 191 pp.

Reconsidering the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Human Rights

Israel’s conflict with its Arab neighbors has provided international relations scholars with an abundance of topics and material. Much of this literature has addressed the military, religious, historical, and territorial aspects of this conflict. Ilan Peleg has adopted a different analytical approach, which places the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within a human rights context. This approach demonstrates that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still holds profound insights into the study of human rights and international law. Through a careful analysis of the origins of human rights abuses and the Israeli responses, Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: Legacy and Politics highlights the legal and political dilemmas that states face when attempting to balance perceived political and security needs with internationally recognized legal norms and human rights standards.

Throughout the twentieth century, members of the international community have established legal norms designed to protect civilian populations during military combat and while under occupation. Since the end of World War II, these protections have expanded to include a wide variety of human rights. These more recent rights are intended primarily to protect citizens from abuse by their own government. By integrating these two legal traditions and evaluating the Israeli occupation, Peleg demonstrates the complementary relationship of these two aspects of international law. As a long-term occupier of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel has assumed a dual role, as an occupier and as a government. In these roles, Israel is bound by the laws of war and human rights standards.

In addition to analyzing a practical application of legal and human rights standards, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict provides the foundation for the argument that the traditional laws of war, which were written to cover relatively short occupations, are inadequate to protect civilian populations living under long-term occupations. Peleg subtly suggests that a new set of legal standards must be established to deal with cases of lengthy occupation. These new legal standards would incorporate pertinent aspects of the laws governing the conduct of war, especially those rules intended to protect civilians, and widely accepted human rights standards.

Before drawing such a conclusion, Peleg establishes the applicable legal standards and describes the political landscape of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first chapter provides a clear, but not oversimplified, historical description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [End Page 907] Throughout the book, Peleg keeps the political and historical context of the conflict in perspective. By doing so, he provides a thorough historical outline of the conflict. In addition to this outline, the first chapter contains a summary of the applicable legal and human rights documents, which include the Fourth Geneva Convention, the 1907 Hague Regulations, and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Throughout the remaining chapters, Peleg relies upon the legal and historical framework established in the first chapter.

This framework is maintained throughout the discussion of the phases of Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank and Gaza. According to Peleg, settlement activity in the Occupied Territories is a primary cause of widespread human rights violations in the years preceding the Intifada. No other Israeli policy had such a profoundly negative impact on human rights in the Occupied Territories. In addition to antagonizing the Arab population, the settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza brought many radical Israeli Jews into close proximity with these same antagonized Arabs, thereby generating intense, unrelenting, and often violent conflict. The Israeli government responded to this conflict and the accompanying domestic political pressure by tightening its security measures in the Occupied Territories, further heightening tensions. Such action inevitably led to a rapid erosion of human rights. The deterioration of human rights in the years preceding the Intifada can be traced to the aggressive settlement policy conducted by radical Israeli Jews and supported by the conservative Likud government.

Three of the most widely criticized Israeli responses to the heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions and the Intifada—deportation, house demolition...

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