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Jerusalem, December 16 1999
Reconciliation
Day
On this Day of
Reconciliation, December 16, it is relevant to bring some
thoughts about the Israeli/Palestinian process of
reconciliation in a human rights perspective
On this
occasion, I was invited by Mr. Nathan Shiransky, the Israeli
Minister of Interior.
The basic
dilemmas involved in the tensions between the claims for
justice as against the need for reconciliation has been
discussed, but little progress has been made at the level of
public debate. Why? Because Palestinians cannot possibly
participate in the process of reconciliation without
expressing their demands to see justice done and an official
apology for injustice to be made.
Dealing with
the human rights violations that each society has committed
on the other is an essential aspect of reconciliation.
Sidestepping the issue is a problematic logic, which lies at
the heart of the Oslo process. How can Israel be persuaded
to avoid committing additional human rights violations, when
it has never acknowledged that these were committed,
illegally and immorally, in the first place?
One category
of human rights violation is based on the behaviour of a
particular individual, like the Israeli soldier, who shoots
a child at close range with a rubber bullet. Even if
investigated and reprimanded by their authority, when did we
hear them say that their actions were wrong? Another
category is the mechanism that drives Palestinian residents
out of Jerusalem, imposes closure, or destroy homes to pave
their way for a bypass road. There is no individual pulling
the trigger in such cases. The guilt cannot be localised.
The entire bureaucracy of Israel is responsible, but do we
see an official expression of remorse for the pain that this
kind of violation have caused?
The result is
that the term of Reconciliation seems like an awkward term
to introduce into human rights work. Reconciliation can be
said to exist in the Israeli society, but in a strange form.
Israeli individuals have little or nothing to reconcile.
They should concern themselves with trying to express any
sort of generalised Israeli morality or tendency, until such
a morality or tendency makes itself known as the official
Israeli position.
In Israel, the
basis for reconciliation is absent. The peace process did
not start because Israel felt that what it was doing was
no longer moral. Israeli officials in the name of the
Israeli people have never expressed remorse. No one has said
publicly that the order to break bones during the Intifada
was wrong. Israeli society saw peace as a ”good deal”, which
did not mark any break in the continuity of the grand
Israeli project, morally or historically.
At this stage,
the reconciliation within our two societies is as important
as the one between them. Both of our societies contain
elements whose hostility to each other spills over into the
relationship between Jew and Arab, and the other way around.
We wish for
our people and for the Israelis, that the moral dimensions
of our history be confronted. Without it, there will be no
reconciliation. Without recognition that the balance of
power, and therefore the balance of wrongs, has not been
equal, that responsibility for the conflict has not been
equal, we cannot accept this peace as genuine.
Palestinians
are still waiting for some kind of apology, which will be
greeted with forgiveness, if it is felt in the deeds and not
only as words.
Bassem Eid
Director
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