The Status of Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip

Résumé du document

As Ilan Pelec warned in the Preface of his book, Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza, Legacy and Politics (p.12), the question of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip remains a controversial one, and a balanced analysis is hard to conduct. The two camps, Pro-Israeli and Pro-Palestinian, are strongly opposed to each other, defending their viewpoints without concessions. The author acknowledges that "it is well known that objectivity in the social sciences is elusive and never completely achievable.? To avoid controversy, Pelec even explains that among all the nominations used to refer to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, he's choosing to refer to them as "the territories?, which is, according to him, the expression with the fewer connotations.

Extraits

[...] Yet the non-respect of humanitarian law isn't specific to this conflict but is enhanced by the international community because of the longevity of the conflict and some obvious violations -like the construction of the Wall. Finally, some voices remain optimistic: a group of non-governmental organizations -among them Care, Oxfam and Médecins du Monde- concluded one of their report by reminding that the current situation in Gaza is completely ‘man-made', and can change with necessary political will' (The Gaza Strip: Humanitarian Implosion, p.4). [...]

[...] Similarly, the lack of Palestinian legal and judiciary institutions can legitimize Israeli strong authority in the territories. And even more when this ] serious breakdown of the criminal justice system and indeed the judiciary as a whole' is acknowledged by the international community Governs the West Bank? Palestinian Administration under Israeli Occupation, ICG-International Crisis Group Middle East Report, September 2004, Amman/Brussels). On the whole, the insufficient authority of the Palestinian Authority, the lack of real leadership, leads Israel to take the responsibility of governing the territories. [...]

[...] International NGOs, as well as local ones, are strongly committed in the defence of Palestinians' human rights too. For the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), ‘restriction of access constitutes an abuse of both human rights and international humanitarian law' ((Angelo Stefanini and Hadas Ziv, Occupied Palestinian Territory: linking health to human rights, p.171). NGOs are also the obvious first providers of emergency help. Today, there are more than 1 million people (almost three-quarters of Gaza's population) who are dependent on food aid. [...]

[...] Starting in 2002, it aimed to separate Israeli settlements from Palestinian communities in the West Bank. The separation created by this Wall has several consequences on Palestinians daily life. Thus, as a direct result, right to health of Palestinians living in the territories is compromised: often, ‘patients are prevented from obtaining care at health centers due to impassable roads or long queues at military checkpoints' (Angelo Stefanini and Hadas Ziv, Occupied Palestinian Territory: linking health to human rights, p.166). The control of the territories' economic life is also mainly in the hands of Israeli authorities. [...]

[...] States are the first actors. On this issue, the role of the Quartet is noticeable: composed of European Union, Russia, United States and the United Nations, it took part in 2003 to the elaboration of the last peace plan, the ‘Roadmap'. This Roadmap (dealing with the status of refugees or of Jerusalem) was accepted by the international community. The United Nations Human Rights Council, headquartered in Geneva has been also involved in the topic of human right abuses by Israel these last years, as in April 2007, when eight resolutions condemning Israel were passed (United Nations Human Rights Council, The Humanitarian Situation in Gaza, Debate on November 15th 2007). [...]