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(Continuation of) Reconciliation: Lessons for Peace and Justice in Palestine (Part One) By Hania Bekdash
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Palestine
Center Brief No. 181 (18 August
2009)
By Hania Bekdash*
Practical Concerns
Truth seeking commissions have been established in more than 30 countries including East Timor, Liberia, Chile, Morocco, Sierra Leone and South Africa. “The work of truth and reconciliation commissions is designed to acknowledge the distinctive identity of the victims, strive to repair the damage done to them through violence, stigmatization, and disrespect, and include their history in the collective memory of the relevant political community.”19 Each country must come up with its own interpretation of justice and truth according to the particular needs of that public for reconciliation to succeed.
South Africa’s former apartheid regime employed state violence. As part of their reconciliation process they valued remorse and imposed a system of amnesty for truth. For some, this led to complaints and further resentment over the impunity of criminals. The lessons learned from South Africa informed the creation of the current Liberian truth commission which also values remorse but accepts that words are not an effective measure of remorse. Action, like community service, is tied to the notion of remorse and amnesty. Both South Africa and Liberia did not offer blanket amnesties, like many cases in Latin America, because they found it ineffective and unjust. In fact, blanket amnesty is now considered contrary to customary international law.20 Conditional amnesty is offered more often. Even though most South Africans viewed the amnesty policy to be unfair, overall the public still felt it was an important and legitimate means to secure a peaceful transition.21 They feel that seeking truth only in order to promote healing did not address the inherently unjust socio-economic system. The goal of truth-seeking and reconciliation in other scenarios has not been healing but rather to uncover systemic injustices and determine ways to rectify them in the future.
Granting amnesty in return for truth is indeed a contentious choice surrounding reconciliation processes. However, in similar situations where criminal accountability for individual perpetrators is either impossible or extremely difficult, amnesty, or non-prosecution, may be unavoidable. Rwanda is a quintessential example of scale overpowering feasibility to the extent that it was impossible to fully attain retributive justice. To accommodate this, many people were tried through an alternative kind of “quicker” community-based court system known as Gacaca tribunals. Since even that retributive process was too slow and insufficient the government planned to release several thousand suspects after a few years. As a result, public demand shifted in favor of restorative justice measures22.
Lasting Peace and Justice through Reconciliation
The case of Israel and Palestine is one of the longest-running conflicts in recent history. Significant steps in reconciliation must therefore be taken while remaining cognizant of the aforementioned lessons. Likely, it will require a combination of different kinds of truth commissions that employ both restorative and retributive justice as well as more grassroots forms of social healing, including developing civic trust as well as social and economic cooperation. These types of communal reconciliation arise from the growing field of conflict transformation in social psychology that aims to create a “more equitable moral order that recognizes the value of difference but is also marked by perceptions of common humanity among former enemies.”23 This should be recognized by peacemakers as well. There is no viable and just alternative to reconciliation in Israel-Palestine. Nevertheless, because reconciliation is an inherently long-term process, it is not considered a practical one. Approaches to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict usually include track one negotiations over “final status” issues that are currently zero-sum in nature and do not address underlying injustices. Zero-sum issues like the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees or recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” can never be fully resolved or deemed acceptable by the parties. In fact, reconciliation prior to settlement is also necessary for the “wider population to be sensitized to co-existence for any elite-level negotiated settlement to last”.24
Although a solution that favors integration over separation would be ideal, even fervent proponents of a two state solution must acknowledge the indisputable need for reconciliation. A two-state settlement along 1967 borders and with UN Resolution 194 implemented would still necessitate a form of reconciliation needed to establish normalcy between adversaries, build a new culture of human rights and the respect for the other’s sovereignty and allow the new states to distance themselves from the unjust policies of the former “regimes”.25 The success of such a settlement would ideally eventually lead to a coalition or federation of two interconnected entities that will have to share land, water, collaborate on security and trade of capital and labor.26
Therefore, a formal structure of transitional justice implementation must be incorporated into Israel-Palestine negotiations. It will be very difficult for Israel to accept this after decades of enjoying impunity for violation of international law and is in fact perhaps the greatest impediment to Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation. Ariel Myerstein describes the necessity of the Israeli Jewish public to acknowledge its role in Palestinian suffering as the key to acquiring historical justice.27 However, the asymmetrical power dynamic creates a problem whereby the weaker party needs the support of the international community because the “power majority” has more resources and ability to propagate its narrative as “absolute fact”.28 That is why pressure must come from internal Israeli society in addition to the international community. Recent events such as the UN inquiry on Gaza, international boycott, and the United Kingdom withdrawal of certain arms sales to Israel are positive indications by the international community that unconditional support for Israel and its policies may be waning.
Although policymakers must consider it, reconciliation will also need to be rooted on the ground. Building incentive within Israeli society for a historic shift from its previous outlook towards the land’s natives should be one goal of intergroup reconciliation. Establishing a historical commission will play an integral role in settlement and would not obviate other forms of truth and justice commissions.29 Ultimately, peace will rest on individuals from one group forming new relationships with individuals from the other group that will lead to change in the political arrangements between Israelis and Palestinians. As many conflict resolution academics have theorized, a significant component to perpetuating inter-group conflict is the blanket view of “the other” as an absolute enemy based on a lack of meaningful interaction or “social distance.” This theory is known as the “contact hypothesis”.30 Creating educational, social and cultural institutions that foster positive Palestinian and Israeli interaction would be useful preparation for formal incorporation of transitional justice mechanisms. An overarching vision of reconciliation established together by Israelis and Palestinians for these institutions are the keys to a successful transformation of the conflict into a state of lasting peace.31
Part Two of this info brief examines the grassroots reconciliation practices that are currently taking place in Israel and Palestine.
* This information brief was written by Palestine Center intern Hania Bekdash, a student at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, as culmination of her research during the Summer 2009 Internship Program. The views expressed within are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund or its educational program, The Palestine Center. This brief may be used without permission if credit is given to the Center.
19 Yoav Peled, Nadim Rouhana,“Transitional Justice and the Right of Return of the Palestinian Refugees”, Theoretical Inquiries in Law 5, no. 2 (2004): 328
20 Stef Vandeginste, "Justice for Rwanda, Ten Years After: Some Lessons Learned for Transitional Justice," www.grandslacs.net/doc/3665.pdf, March 2004, (accessed on 7/9/09).
21 James Gibson, "The Truth About Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa," International Political Science Review 26, no. 4 (2005): 349-350
22 Stef Vandeginste, "Justice for Rwanda, Ten Years After: Some Lessons Learned for Transitional Justice,"www.grandslacs.net/doc/3665.pdf, March 2004, (accessed on 7/9/09).
23 Nevin Aiken, “Learning to Live Together: Transitional Justice and Intergroup Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association’s 50th Annual Convention “Exploring the Past, Anticipating the Future”, New York, NY February 15-18, 2009. USA Online <PDF>. 2009-05-22 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p314063_index.html, 5.
24 Ariel Meyerstein, "Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Israel/Palestine: Assessing the Applicability of the Truth Commission Paradigm," Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 38, (2007): 296.
25 Ibid., 306
26 Uri Avnery, “A Binational State? God Forbid!”, Institute for Palestine Studies, (Summer 1999),.http://www.palestine-studies.org/journals.aspx?id=4380&jid=1&href=fulltext, (accessed July 14, 2009).
27 Ariel Meyerstein, "Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Israel/Palestine: Assessing the Applicability of the Truth Commission Paradigm," Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 38, (2007): 285.
28 Nadim Rouhana, “Identity and Power in the Reconciliation of National Conflict,” in The Social Psychology of Group Identity and Social Conflict: Theory, Application, and Practice, ed. A. H. Eagly, U.L. Hamilton, R.M. Baron, (Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2004) : 173-186.
29 Gershon Shafir, “Reflections on the Right of Return: Divisible or Indivisible?” in Exiles and Return: Predicaments of Palestinians and Jews, ed. Ann Lesch and Ian Lustick (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005): 311
30 John Duckitt, “Prejudice and Intergroup Hostility.” In Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, ed. Sears, David O. et al., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 559-600; Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict, (New York: The Free Press, 1956); Miles Hewstone and Rupert Brown, Contact and Conflict in Intergroup Encounters, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
31 Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME), "Establishing a ‘Localized’ Process for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Israel and Palestine to Address Refugee Issues at the Heart of the Conflict," http://www.vispo.com/PRIME/truthandreconciliation.htm (accessed on 7/14/09).