Arab Center Washington DC

April 21, 2020

Interview by Jonathan Kuttab with Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon, Executive Director of Churches for Middle East Peace, regarding church activism during the coronavirus pandemic. Jonathan Kuttab, a Human Rights Lawyer and Non-resident fellow at Arab Center Washington DC conducted the interview via video conference.

Arab Center Washington DC

See original publication here

MARCH 27, 2020

Jonathan Kuttab

The current coronavirus pandemic has placed great responsibilities on governments to provide necessary guidance, testing, and regulations regarding social distancing and treatment of those who are infected. Governments also are required to ensure the delivery of medical supplies, masks, respirators, and hospital beds in large quantities to meet the needs of the populations in their charge. As cases of COVID-19 are confirmed in the Gaza Strip and fears of its rapid spread in that densely populated area increase, Israel’s legal and humanitarian obligations toward Gaza and its population become salient and take center stage.

Legal Context and Current Conditions

Under customary international law, the duties of a belligerent occupier toward the civilian population are very clear and include ensuring law and order and public safety. The Fourth Geneva Convention specifically codified and detailed the responsibilities of an occupying power in a situation akin to the current one by stating that: “to the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population. It should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.”

There is no question that Gaza’s medical resources are extremely limited and its hospitals, already under great strain, are woefully deficient and cannot meet the requirements of this pandemic. There are some 60 ventilators for a population of two million people, and Israel has provided only 200 testing kits for COVID-19. Ghada Majadle of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has put the responsibility on Israel “by virtue of international law to provide the required means to the Health Ministry in Gaza.”

Israel not only has failed to live up to its responsibilities of providing for the needs of Gaza’s civilians, it has also added to their hardship by the crippling siege it has imposed on the strip since 2007, severely limiting economic activities and controlling all exports as well as the import of all goods and supplies, including food, medical provisions, fuel, and building materials. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, “[a]fter decades of occupation in which it avoided any investment there, and after more than 12 years of blockade, Israel has turned Gaza into the biggest open-air prison in the world.” It has also impeded the ability of civilians and their families to seek medical care outside the Gaza strip for cases that cannot be handled there. Through its control over the border crossings, Israel’s military determines who can leave to seek medical care in Israel, the West Bank, or farther afield in Jordan.

“Disengagement” and Responsibility

The department of the Israeli army responsible for issuing or withholding such permits is the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). While COGAT exercises full control over many aspects of Palestinians’ lives in Gaza and the West Bank, the official position of the Israeli government has been that since its removal of Jewish settlers and redeployment and withdrawal of its ground forces from the center of Gaza in 2005, Israel’s occupation of Gaza ended at that time; therefore, power and responsibility for the people of Gaza devolved to the Palestinians themselves. Furthermore, since Gaza came under the control of Hamas in 2007, Israel announced that it considered Gaza a “hostile entity” and felt free to impose sanctions on its population as a means of pressuring or punishing Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization.

The argument that Israel has “disengaged” and “withdrawn” from Gaza and is therefore not accountable—which has currency in Israel and is repeated by some of its supporters abroad—is no longer a rational or appropriate one to make. Indeed, no countries around the world have accepted such a stance and all continue to view the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank as under occupation. While Israeli forces withdrew from the city centers and delegated some power to Palestinians, they remain—and act—very much as occupiers. The fact that Hamas, unlike the Palestinian Authority, is much more antagonistic to Israel does not change this reality. In the words of Shannon Maree Torrens, “That Israel denies that it is an occupying power in relation to Gaza should have no effect on the international community holding it to account for responsibilities it has long neglected.”

The Occupation of Gaza Continues

While Israel has in fact redeployed its ground troops out of the populated centers and does not handle the daily affairs of Gazans, it continues to exercise very effective control, from the outside, on all aspects of life there. Specifically, Israel’s dominance is evident and exercised in the following areas:

• Whenever they desire, the Israel Defense Forces enter Gaza and carry out operations both openly and clandestinely.
• Israel regulates the borders so that no persons or goods can enter or leave the area without its permission. Although one part of Gaza’s southern border is controlled by Egypt, a joint agreement between Israel and Egypt ensures that no goods or personnel can enter or exit without coordinating with Israel. Illegal tunnels that attempt to circumvent this system of control are frequently bombed or flooded by Israel and Egypt.
• Israel commands the airspace above Gaza. Its planes and drones constantly conduct surveillance and military operations.
• Israel controls the sea coast and territorial waters. It regularly prohibits fishermen from fishing beyond the limits it sets and changes from time to time. The Israeli navy blockades the coast, fires on fishing boats, and interdicts any attempts to break the siege by sea flotillas, even in international waters. Israel also exploits—for its own purposes exclusively—the subterranean natural gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea off Gaza’s shores.
• Israeli currency is used in Gaza and Israel controls the flow of any other currency.
• Israel controls the entry of any humanitarian assistance into the area.
• The population register for Gaza is in Israeli-controlled computers and all Gazans are required to use Israeli-issued ID numbers. To be effective, documents officially issued by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas require numbers that are issued and approved by Israel.
• Postal, telephone, and internet connections between Gaza and the outside world are all “hosted” and conducted through Israel.
• While Hamas ostensibly runs internal day-to-day affairs in Gaza, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority deny its legitimacy. Daily affairs are conducted within the parameters of Israeli approval. While such cooperation is not always acknowledged by either side, in fact Israel considers Gaza to be a territory under its effective control. In practice, Israel is happy to cede the responsibility for running the affairs of the Gaza Strip but it has never relinquished control or power over the area in any matter that it deemed was in its interest.

In reality, therefore, Gaza continues to be effectively under Israeli occupation. The responsibility for protecting Gaza’s citizens from the spread and serious effects of the coronavirus must rest with Israel. Gaza’s Health Ministry has issued warnings about the epidemic and has appealed to Israel to provide necessary supplies in order to help stem the impact of the virus. To be sure, Israel must understand and implement its obligations toward Gaza’s citizens and abide by its responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions.

Jonathan Kuttab is a leading human rights lawyer and a Non-resident Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC. He is a resident of East Jerusalem and a partner of Kuttab, Khoury, and Hanna Law Firm there. He is the co-founder of Al-Haq, the first international human rights legal organization in Palestine, and of the Palestine Center for the Study of Nonviolence.

By:

Jonathan Kuttab

Published by

Middle East Institute

March 2, 2020

The announcement of Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” was a rude shock, roundly condemned by almost everyone concerned with peace and justice between Israelis and Palestinians. But it also presents an urgent challenge for all those who reject it because they realize the dire implications of what it portends for the future of any peaceful negotiated solution. It unmistakably marks the death of the two-state solution and presents a vision of how Israel would like to live with a permanent grip over the entire territory and the lives of all Palestinians currently under its control.

If a genuine two-state solution is truly dead, and an equitable one-state solution is even harder to achieve, then where does that leave us? What is, or should be, the agenda for the foreseeable future for those concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

For Israel and its ardent supporters: The occupation has gone on for far too long. The excuses for failing to make peace have grown very thin and are no longer believed, even by its own friends. For the foreseeable future, Israel holds all the cards and must alone determine how it wishes to play them. It can no longer claim it has “no partner for peace” as a pretext for not moving forward. It controls Palestinians, their lives, their movement, and even their leadership. It holds levers over all aspects of their lives, and acts as sovereign and owner of the entire land, unrestrained by anything (including international law, or the international community). It has successfully deflected all acts of resistance and all outside pressure. It still needs to determine, at least for its own purposes, where it wants to go, and what it should do. The collapse of the moves for Palestinian statehood (celebrated by some) forces the issue of: What then? Do we rule over Palestinians forever, as noncitizens? Can we accept in perpetuity that our Jewish state can only treat Palestinians as unequal in Israel; occupied in parts of the West Bank; totally besieged in Gaza; and permanently barred into exile in their diaspora? And if so, how do we Israelis plan to “manage” this situation as a permanent state of affairs? How can we best deal with another people that we rule, but in line with our own ideals? Palestinians are going nowhere, so how we deal with them (sans excuses) is part of who we are or have become.

For Palestinians: As hopes for a genuine independent state collapse, and the one-state solution appears even farther away, how do we struggle for our rights and dignity, and build for ourselves and our children a better future? Submission to the existing injustice is not an option. Can we find methods that are effective and goals that are achievable? Surely violence has not served us well and is not likely to succeed against such enemies, who are immeasurably more powerful, better armed and organized, and strategically and tactically dominant on the battlefield — and paranoid to boot. Nor can we expect salvation from either the Arab states, Europe, or the outside world, all of which are too consumed with their own problems and too heavily invested in their relationships with Israel to seriously challenge the status quo. What else can we, Palestinians, do? Can a more assertive and better planned and organized non-violent campaign of resistance serve us better?

For third parties who are concerned about peace and justice, and who perhaps care about both Israelis and Palestinians: Is there a path to actively supporting both and working for human rights and dignity in light of the overwhelmingly depressing political prognosis? Despairing of an “ultimate solution,” are there interim measures we can work for or support?

To all of the above, there are answers, options, and paths for action that may not lay out “the solution,” but can be worthwhile, effective steps in the right direction. Together, they provide a realistic alternative vision and political program to that being pursued by Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. None of these steps are easy, cost free, or guaranteed to “solve” the problem, but each can be perused without either demanding or ruling out a particular political solution in the future. The parties, and particularly Israel, will not easily agree to any of them, and they still require a detailed workplan to bring them about, but these are interim goals, or campaigns we can work on in the meanwhile:

1. Ending the siege of Gaza and allowing people and goods to move free in and out of the Strip must be a top priority in the interim. The siege was initially undertaken as a political move to punish Gazans for their support of Hamas and to sever the West Bank from Gaza with the aim of fragmenting Palestinians and thus preventing Palestinian statehood. It cannot be a permanent feature of life. With due consideration for the desire to prevent weapons from entering Gaza (a failed exercise in any case), draconian controls over the civilian life and economy of two million people in the Gaza Strip cannot be a permanent state of affairs. It must end. Whatever puny efforts some in Gaza may undertake to militarily resist are strategically insignificant, even though Israel will not be able to completely deter them by force alone But given the relative quiet (from Gaza’s side), the siege must be lifted. This is something all parties must work on now. Concerted diplomatic pressure, as well as courageous nonviolent action to break the siege, is called for and must be initiated immediately.
2. Abandoning armed resistance by Palestinians is another top priority. Armed struggle is never an end unto itself. It is only a means for achieving political ends, which seem to be elusive now. However deeply oppressed and however justifiably provoked Palestinians are, armed resistance cannot help them in their present situation. Not a single political or national goal can be advanced by acts of desperation, especially if aimed at civilian “softer targets,” and such acts are bound to be counterproductive. They lead to massive punishing countermeasures, which both the Israeli public and the outside world view as “justified.” They also bolster right-wing extremism and place Palestinian advocates on the defensive. The issue is not the legitimacy of armed resistance, but its efficacy. Palestinians will do well (for themselves) to suspend any such actions. The emotional rush or satisfaction derived from “doing something” or “making the other side suffer” is not a rational reason to do things that are counterproductive to our cause. By the same token, continued Israeli reliance on the army and deadly force has also proven ineffective and “deterrence” has not worked. Israelis must seriously rethink the efficacy of reliance on military power as well.
3. Struggling against collective punishment and administrative measures. Many of the forms of control used by Israel against Palestinians punish whole segments of the community, in a supposed attempt to fashion the behavior of the entire community by punishing its members and rendering them all subject to Israel’s arbitrary acts. These measures include detention without trial, house demolitions, collective punishments, restrictions on travel, and other measures undertaken at the sole discretion of the occupying forces. Such actions contravene international law, common morality, and basic human decency. Some would say they also contravene the character and morality of Judaism and of the nature of society Jews wish to have for Israel. Such measures may find some justification in times of crisis but cannot serve as a permanent feature of any people’s existence. If Israel wishes to “manage” this population, it must realize that neither occupation, nor apartheid have permanency. Just as slavery and colonialism eventually had to be abolished, so will this injustice.

If Israel is going to insist, in the foreseeable future, on being in charge of Palestinian lives and affairs and on denying them genuine statehood, it must find a way to provide a minimum of normalcy by lifting the measures that subjugate them to arbitrary actions. It must give them a role in deciding their own affairs, in the West Bank (including Area C, which is currently outside the control of the Palestinian Authority) and Gaza, as well as in Israel. A large number of measures exist that are totally within Israel’s control, and can be undertaken unilaterally, with minimal impact on the broader security situation. Currently, existing military orders give Israeli officials full control over all aspects of life, including digging wells, building and land use in Areas C and B, and travel to and from the Palestinian areas. Israel can easily cede such controls without endangering its security. Such actions do not require Palestinian “agreement,” and they do not determine a particular ultimate political solution. Israel should seriously consider implementing them unilaterally rather than keeping them as “potential bargaining chips” in negotiations over a solution that does not appear on the horizon for the foreseeable future. These include:

1. Ending all administrative detentions and releasing administrative detainees.
2. Removing all restrictions on normal movement of goods and services between the West Bank and Israel, as well as between Gaza and the West Bank. Specific individuals may still be prevented from movement into Israel by court decree, upon good cause, but the blanket prohibitions on the entire population must be lifted, especially with respect to access to East Jerusalem. This has actually been tried a number of times, with good results. The continued restrictions have a political, not security, basis. They are an expression of power and control, not a need for security.
3. Removing all barriers, checkpoints, and obstructions within the West Bank, which would allow freedom of movement for goods and persons. These restrictions currently hamper economic development, create daily humiliations and frustration, and their contribution to Israel’s security is negligible, while their impact on the lives of Palestinians and their contribution to increasing hatred and enmity is enormous.
4. Granting Palestinians permission to build in Area C of the West Bank and returning zoning and planning authority in the area to them. Israeli exercise of its powers in this area is an expression of desire for control and domination, rather than need.
5. Creating new legislative and constitutional guarantees for equality in Israel itself, and making the promise of equality in Israel’s Declaration of Independence operational and binding.
6. Making all residents of the West Bank, including Jewish settlers, subject to the same laws, administered by civilian, not military courts. This measure does not need Palestinian approval. Those Jewish settlers who wish to continue living illegally in the West Bank, for whatever reason, must be required, as a minimum, to accept legal equality with Palestinians in that area. This could take the form of extending certain Israeli privileges to West Bank Palestinians or alleviating certain burdens from the Arab population that would be intolerable to Jewish settlers. Either way, it would promote equality without prejudicing Israeli security or the eventual political outcome. Israeli refusal to carry out this suggestion and the suggestion in (4) above lays bare the true nature and purposes of the occupation regime, which perhaps will not change till these goals are defeated.

It may be argued that all these suggestions would only beautify and prolong the occupation rather than remove it. My answer is that each and every one of these suggestions can be pursued without abandoning one’s own political beliefs or one’s own struggle for the ultimate political outcome. Yet they address the current intolerable situation that has been oppressing the local population for half a century while pretending to be temporary. The interminable debate about the “ultimate solution” should give way to concerted action on specific interim measures that all people of goodwill can agree upon.

Jonathan Kuttab is a leading human rights lawyer and a partner with Kuttab, Khoury, and Hanna Law Firm in East Jerusalem. The views expressed in this article are his own.

Photo by Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Human rights concerns grow as Netanyahu tapped to form coalition in Israel

LISTEN HERE to Jonathan Kuttab post-Israeli election review

April 17, 2019. Washington. Interview from East Jerusalem with Attorney Jonathan Kuttab

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has tapped current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a governing coalition, after a majority of Knesset members supported him. Netanyahu will now continue talks with the goal of dividing up cabinet ministries among his coalition partners. The new government is expected to be the most right wing in Israeli history, and human rights advocates are sounding the alarm that even more restrictions on Palestinian citizens of Israel are imminent.

Loud &Clear producer Nicole Roussell spent the week in Israel covering the election there. She had the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Kuttab, a leading human rights attorney in Israel and Palestine. He was born in West Jerusalem, but after the Six Day War, his family moved to the United States. After practicing law with a Wall Street firm for several years, he returned home to co-found the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, al-Haw (which is a group of lawyers and others who assist with human rights issues), and the Mandela Institute for Political Prisoners. He serves on the board of directors of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.

A six-part introduction to the history of what is often called the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.  Each under 10 minutes. Less than one hour in total, Jonathan provides an easy to understand, yet comprehensive understanding of the history and current situation for the people of Palestine.

Jonathan Kuttab is a leading human rights lawyer in Israel and Palestine. He was born in West Jerusalem, but after the Six Day War, his family moved to the United States. After practicing with a Wall Street law firm for several years, he returned home to co-found the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, Al-Haq (lawyers and others who assist with human rights issues), and the Mandela Institute for Political Prisoners. He is licensed to practice law in Palestine, Israel, and New York, and serves on the board of The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.