Gender Stereotypes and Ignored Dimensions of Sexual Violence in Conflict

Several parts of this post come from two previous posts published on the University of Essex Human Rights Centre Blog, entitled ‘What about the Men? – The Silence on Male Victims of Sexual Violence in Conflict’ and ‘Women – the Ignored Perpetrators of Sexual Violence in Conflict ‘.

Sexual violence in conflict has received a lot of attention in the last couple of years. I would say this is mostly thanks to the cases prosecuted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (the ICTY has a very interesting documentary on the subject of its prosecution of sexual violence crimes).

Even at a national level, as has been the case in Kosovo (where I currently live and work), wartime rape is a hot topic.

In June this year, an art installation at the sports stadium in Pristina, Kosovo, made headlines around the world. The installation, entitled ‘Thinking of You’, featured 10,000 women’s dresses, paid tribute to the many female victims of sexual violence during the war in Kosovo in 1998-1999.

In 2014, female politicians and women’s groups in Kosovo petitioned the UN to investigate wartime sexual violence. It is estimated that about 20,000 women were raped or sexually assaulted during the conflict, however there is no reliable statistics on this and some say this number is unrealistic if one compares the war in Kosovo (e.g. the length of the war, its intensity, and the total number of victims) to that of Bosnia.

In 2014, the Kosovo parliament also amended its ‘Law on the Status and the Rights of the Martyrs, Invalids, Veterans, Members of Kosova Liberation Army, Civilian Victims of War and their Families’, to include sexual violence victims. This means that victims of sexual violence victims can have access to reparations. The amended law states that a victim of sexual violence is a ‘person who survived sexual abuse and rape’ during the war. Clearly this is a gender-neutral definition of a victim.

However, the discussion here in Kosovo about sexual violence war victims is only centered around female victims and the groups involved in pushing for these victims’ rights are women’s groups such as UN Women and the Kosova Women’s Network. The 2014 petition in Kosovo only asked that the UN investigate sexual violence against women (and also focused only on ethnically Serb perpetrators), and the ‘Thinking of You’ installation clearly had only female victims in mind (being a display of dresses and all).

The same is true at the international level. In June 2014, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office hosted a ‘Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict’, co-chaired by Foreign Secretary William Hague and UN Special Envoy Angelia Jolie. The event brought together Government representatives from over 120 countries, over 1,000 experts, faith leaders, youth organizations and representatives of civil society and international organizations. However, the Summit focused almost exclusively on female victims (Angelina Jolie did mention men as potential victims of sexual violence in conflict in a speech, but the overall tone of the Summit was that this was a conference to end conflict-related sexual violence against women).

Let me be clear: I am not saying that we should not discuss female victims of sexual violence during war. Of course we should! Women are still the majority of victims of sexual violence crimes during conflict.

However, when victims’ advocates and the international community only mention men in passing when talking about sexual violence in conflict, it marginalizes and already marginalized group of victims.

The idea, both internationally and at a national level, thus still seems to be that men are perpetrators of sexual violence and women victims. I would therefore like to speak in this post about two things that challenge that perception – namely male victims of sexual violence in conflict and also female perpetrators.

Male Victims of Sexual Violence in Conflict

Despite the lack of attention from the international community, victims’ organizations and advocates, men and boys have long been targeted for sexual violence in particular and gender-specific ways that deserve the attention of the human rights community.

The issue of sexual violence against men in conflict is severely and chronically under-reported. One explanation is that male victims are often unwilling to come forward, due to shame, guilt and fear. If you thought it was difficult for women in patriarchal societies to speak up about what they have been through, imagine what it is like for men in these societies, where by national law men might not even be able to be raped. In countries where homosexuality is criminalized, survivors are often faced with an assumption that they have engaged in consensual homosexual activity, and can themselves face criminal charges.

Another factor is the reticence of civil society to recognize that male victims even exist. In fact, in 2002 it was reported that out of 4,076 NGOs that focused on conflict-related and politically-motivated sexual violence only 3% mentioned male victims. 25% of these NGOs explicitly denied that male-on-male violence was a serious problem.

The lack of attention paid to the sexual abuse of men in conflict is particularly disturbing given the extent of the problem. In recent years sexual violence against men has been documented in conflicts in Argentina, Chechnya, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Kenya, Liberia, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Uganda, the former Yugoslavia, and many other countries.

For example, 21% of Sri Lankan Tamil males said they had experienced sexual abuse while in detention, and a study of 6,000 concentration camp detainees in Sarajevo found that 80% of the males had been raped. A 2010 study in the DRC reported 23.6% of men having been subject to sexual violence, with 64.5% of the sexual violence being conflict-related.

Many activists like to point out that women are subjected to sexual violence in ways specific to their gender, and just because they are women. However, it is important to note that men are also targeted in particular and gender-specific ways, just like women, and that sexual abuse of men during armed conflict frequently touches upon issues of shame and degradation.

Male rape does not only include anal rape by a perpetrator or by a foreign object. Victims may, for example, be forced to perform fellatio on their perpetrator or on another victim. In the case of Prosecutor v. Ranko Češić the defendant admitted forcing at gunpoint two detained Muslim brothers to perform fellatio on each other, in the presence of other people. Male victims may also be forced to rape fellow victims.

Another type of sexual violence suffered by men is that of enforced sterilization, which largely comprises castration and other forms of sexual mutilation. The UN Commission of Experts observed that in the former Yugoslavia “[c]astrations are performed through crude means such as, forcing one internee to bite off another's testicles, and tying one end of a wire to the testicles and the other end to a motorcycle, then using the motorcycle to yank off the testicles”. (For a gruesome example of this type of sexual violence in the war in Bosnia, read the judgment in Prosecutor v. Tadić,  (IT-94-1) at para. 206).

Other forms of sexual violence of particular prevalence are genital violence that does not amount to enforced sterilization, such as being hit in the testicles, forced nudity, and enforced masturbation. Sexual abuse of prisoners often begins with forced nudity, accompanied by verbal threats, which adds to the humiliation. In Kosovo, the most common way of sexually humiliating men was to force them to strip naked in public. Forced nudity was also reported in relation to the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, where male prisoners were also forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped.

Despite the grave and widespread nature of sexual violence against men and boys, there is still a lot of reluctance to acknowledge the extent of the problem and to properly address the issue. As I mentioned above, many women’s organizations and NGOs are reluctant to bring up male victims, perhaps out of fear that it will take some of the attention away from female victims, who had to fight so long for recognition.

Furthermore, the international instruments that contain the most comprehensive and meaningful definitions of sexual violence prima facie exclude men, reflecting and embedding the assumption that sexual violence is a phenomenon relevant only to women and girls. ‘Gender-based violence’ is too often associated exclusively with violence against women, and when it is acknowledged that men are also victims of sexual violence it is most often only mentioned in passing.

Female Perpetrators of Sexual Violence

While I have long known about the issue of male victims I discovered the topic of female perpetrators rather recently, while doing research for a presentation on sexual violence in conflict. And I have to admit that, even though I consider myself very open-minded about the issue of sexual violence, I found the idea of women committing sexual violence crimes in a conflict context extremely shocking and disturbing. 

If the issue of male victims of sexual violence in conflict is often sidelined, the issue of female perpetrators is almost completely ignored altogether, both in international discourse about sexual violence in conflict and in academic research.

Nevertheless data shows that women do acts as perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict.

In a study from 2010, 41% of female victims of sexual violence in the DRC, and 10% of male victims, reported they were victimized by female perpetrators. Furthermore, women have reportedly committed acts of sexual violence in conflicts around the world, such as Liberia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka.

Women commit and participate in the commission of sexual violence in a number of ways, including as direct perpetrators. In Sierra Leone, female combatants in the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) located potential victims, and restrained them when they were raped. Women also raped other women with various foreign objects, such as bottles or sticks.

In other instances women may commit sexual violence although as an indirect perpetrator. Rwanda’s former Minister for Family and Women Affairs, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, is the first, and only, woman convicted by an international tribunal for rape. Up to half a million women were raped during the Rwandan genocide according to the UN, and Nyiramasuhuko ordered women and girls to be raped.

Why is there such resistance to address the issue of women as perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict? What is it about it that makes us so uncomfortable? After all, international law provides a definition of rape and sexual violence where men and women can be both victims and perpetrators. When looking into these questions, it often becomes an issue of presumptions and stereotypes around gender and the nature of 'male' and 'female' behavior. 

The argument is often made that the presence of women in combat units will lower the tendency to abuse non-combatants, particularly non-combatant women. This of course is in line with stereotypical assumptions about gender that makes men into powerful warriors and women into peaceful creatures, or into victims. It reflects the widely held belief that women are nurturing and much less violent than men, even when involved in armed groups, and often assumes female combatants to be cooks, dependents etc., but not fighters. Thus, women are considered very unlikely to commit rape and sexual violence. This perspective has been used to argue for more women in peacekeeping operations, since women would have a ‘civilizing effect’ on their male counterparts.

However, if we look at the reality of the situation these assumptions seems not only extremely archaic in their view on gender and gender roles, but also completely incorrect.

For example, in the conflict in Sierra Leone, rape was endemic with most rapes reportedly committed by the RUF (85.6%), despite the fact that the RUF consisted of 24% female fighters (compared to under 10% for other armed groups). 25% of the gang rapes were committed by mixed male/female groups and women participated in a quarter of the reported gang rapes.

There was also no evidence that either male of female perpetrators felt differently about shame regarding sexual violence crimes. The male perpetrators did not feel shame committing these crimes in front of the female fighters, and the female perpetrators felt that the shame was the victims', just like the male perpetrators did.

There is thus little to suggest that women are by nature less prone to sexual violence than men, or that their presence in armed groups would have a calming effect on the male fighters. In fact, in the conflict in Sierra Leone, women were rumoured to be particularly vicious fighters and had a reputation for encouraging excessive violence. Studies have shown the same in armed groups, such as the IRA in Northern Ireland and the LTTE in Sri Lanka.

Another argument is sometimes made that the presence of women in armed groups diminishes the ‘need’ for the rape of non-combatants. This argument is obviously based on the assumption that rape and sexual violence has to do with sexual gratification. It suggests that groups with more female fighters would be less likely to commit rape, and that perpetrators of sexual violence would be almost all male, regardless of the number of women in the group.

However, as seen above, the RUF consisted of a large number of female fighters, which did not seem to affect the prevalence of rape of female non-combatants, or the gender of the perpetrator. Furthermore, it was common for female fighters in the RUF to be raped when they first joined, and 70% of the reported cases of sexual slavery were committed by the RUF. This indicates that the presence of women does little to diminish the ‘need’ for rape of non-combatants.

This argument, which rests on the assumption about sexual gratification, is also problematic since the likelihood that every male in the armed forces would be sexually satisfied by a willing female participant is highly unlikely. Also, the idea that it's a woman's job to sexually satisfy her colleagues if she's part of the military is perpetrating rape culture. Furthermore, this argument cannot account for the form of sexual violence occurring during conflict, and the persistence of rape with foreign objects. 

Clearly gender stereotypes and preconceived notions about the true nature of men and women make us blind to reality; that women also commit sexual violence crimes.

Research has shown that women can be, and are, perpetrators of sexual violence, just as well as men. Women are subject to similar pressures from within armed groups and, facing similar circumstances, should be expected to commit similar crimes. Furthermore, women clearly commit acts sexual violence in conflict both as direct and indirect perpetrators. It is obviously wrong to take the simplistic view of men as perpetrator and women as victims of men’s violence.

Gendered assumptions about the rules of women as combatants and perpetrators of sexual violence has serious policy consequences and have resulted in these women being largely excluded from various types of post-conflict policy processes that deal with perpetrators of sexual violence.

If we are serious about addressing the issue of sexual violence in conflict we not only need to acknowledge the widespread prevalence of male victims of sexual violence, but also that of female perpetrators of these crimes.

Understanding the Occupation of Palestine: Gaza

This is the third post helping to contextualize the occupation of Palestine. The first post considered the divisions in the West Bank, excluding Jerusalem, and what these divisions mean for life in the West Bank. The second post considered what these divisions would look like if applied to the US State of Ohio, where I’m from. This third post addresses the situation in Gaza, and a fourth post will come next week discussing Jerusalem, where I’ll also discuss the troubling eviction of Nora Sub-Laban and her family and tell you how you can help the Sub-Laban family.

As in the earlier posts, I use the term “occupation” in its legal sense, meaning the effective control of a state's territory by a foreign state through its military, impacting the autonomy and daily life of those within the territory.  There’s an entire set of laws that attach to this legal status but most notable is the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which addresses how occupying powers (in this case Israel) should treat occupied states (in this case, Palestine).

Understanding the conflict between Israel and Palestine requires understanding the history and the divisions within Palestine. Understanding how the occupation and its divisions impact land, water, jobs, family life, and travel is necessary if one is to understand why the conflict is still ongoing, and why violence has escalated in the past 16 days.

On Wednesday, I posted a bit about the current situation, but it appears that the western media is now reporting on the situation more frequently. Unfortunately, the media I’ve read has reported things without critical analysis or reflection on the driving forces of the conflict. It appears the media assumes that ethnic identity and religion are enough of a reason for spirally violence, as if stabbings and shootings are a natural reaction to different skin tones and prayer practices.

They’re not.

Ethnic identity and religion are certainly significant factors in this conflict, but I don’t believe they are the dominant factors.  I think the more significant factor is how those divisions are used to determine access to resources and the protection of fundamental rights. 

I realize that probably sounds like semantics, but it’s not.

It’s not the presence of ethnic, religious, or racial diversity that lead to conflict; it’s how politicians use or manipulate those differences to gain power and control.  The differences become significant and likely to lead to conflict when one group is rewarded for its identity and another punished.

Rewards and punishments can happen by precluding some from voting, by recognizing only certain religious holidays or expressions, by allowing other religions and religious institutions to be co-opted, by allowing one group a right to participate in some industries while precluding other groups from the same.  

And lest you think I’m just rambling out loud, there’s research to back me up on this, and a scientific term for these group-based divisions: horizontal inequalities.  Thus far, four types of horizontal inequalities have been identified and found to be significant for determining when a conflict is likely: political, economic, social, and cultural.

It should not be shocking to anyone working in human rights that these four types match quite closely with the focus of international human rights law: civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. In the scientific literature on horizontal inequalities, civil and political rights appear lumped together under the umbrella of “political.”

Those who work in human rights know that while we have delineated rights into five “types,” these rights are now considered indivisible, interdependent, an interrelated.

With this background, it should not be surprising that conflict is most likely to emerge in situations where horizontal inequalities are experienced (real or perceived) across two or more of the four types identified.

To put it in simple, legally-based terms: conflict is most likely to occur when human rights violations are based on group identities, and those violations touch on multiple kinds of human rights.

(I know, half of my friends just went, “Um… yeah… obviously.”)

                                                                                                                                

While I’ve not seen research directly on Israel and Palestine, the theory seems to bear out here quite clearly.  

I’m starting to become convinced that while horizontal inequalities manifest themselves seemingly everywhere here, nowhere in Israel and Palestine bears the brunt of horizontal inequalities – and the attendant political attempt to use inequalities to gain power and control – as much as Gaza. 

It should therefore not be particularly surprising that Gaza is often at the heart of the worst parts of the conflict here, including deadly protests this week. Understanding what’s underlying the conflict there is important. 

Gaza: The World’s Largest Open-Air Prison

Gaza is often called the world’s largest open-air prison as people within Gaza are principally disconnected from the rest of the international community.  With only 360 square kilometers / 139 square miles, and 1.816 million people, it’s one of the most densely populated areas in the world. 1.24 million of those Palestinians are refugees or displaced persons.

To give this some context, Columbus, the capital of my home state of Ohio, is roughly 578 km / 223 square miles, or 1.6x the size of Gaza.  It houses 787,033 people, or less than half the number of people in Gaza.

Here’s a map of Israel and Palestine from Political Geography Now:

Gaza is that small part in the southwest corner.  The BBC provides this map of just Gaza:

Since 2007, Israel has instituted a land, sea and air blockade of the Gaza Strip, reducing the area’s GDP by 50%.

With the limited construction and limited imports, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Gaza has an unemployment rate of more than 40%.  Youth unemployment is over 60%.

More worryingly, the UN estimates that 73% of people in the Gaza Strip suffer from food insecurity.

The 2014 conflict between Hamas and Israel left an estimated 96,000 homes damaged or destroyed.  Reconstructing these homes has been virtually impossible. As the UN explains, “basic construction materials (gravel, steel bars, and cement), along with a wide range of spare parts, computer equipment, and vehicles” are considered as “dual use” items by Israel, meaning they are both civilian and military in nature.  Consequently, Israel severely restricts their import, and “[l]ess than 1% of the construct materials required to rebuild houses” had been able to enter Gaza by June 2015, almost a year after the conflict.

The cutting off of Gaza (which, again, started in 2007) has been effective – and deadly.  Gaza is small and separated from the West Bank completely. The northern and eastern borders are with Israel, and the Southern border is with Egypt. To the West is the Mediterranean Sea. Let’s discuss each of these borders.

First, Israel provides for two primary points of entrance to Gaza: one on the north / northeast border; the other on the eastern border. People, including workers and humanitarian personnel, must use the Erez crossing at the north-eastern border. Goods, including food and animal feed, can be brought in only through the Karni crossing point to the East. There are no other routine or primary crossing points along the strip. Some maps will show you two extra entry points, but those are actually just alternative points that can be used, but rarely are.

Israel’s control of these points is not limited to a routine or formalistic check of passports and contraband material. Israel determines the amount of food, building supplies and medical supplies that can go in and out of Gaza, effectively controlling daily life in Palestine. 

There’s a fence along the border of Israel and Gaza.  Gazans are prohibited from coming within 300 meters (984 feet; .18 mile) of the fence.  This means that a significant area is inaccessible even for farming, much less recreational use or housing construction.

This is a scaled map from the UN showing the no-go area around the fence.

To the West, Israel enforces a Naval embargo off the coast of Gaza. Under the Oslo Accords, Gaza’s fisherman are entitled to fish up to 20 nautical miles (approx. 37 km / 23 miles)  off the coast. Since 2012, Israel has enforced a limit of 6 nautical miles (11 km / 6.9 miles), though at times it has been just 3 nautical miles (5.5 km / 3.5 miles). It also enforces a 1.5 nautical (2.7 km / 1.7 miles) mile no-fishing zone to the north, on the border with Israel. There’s also a 1 nautical mile (1.8 km / 1.15 miles) no fishing zone to the south, on the border with Egypt. 

This has significantly damaged the ability of Palestinians to enjoy sustainable fishing.

To the South, there is supposed to be a crossing at Rafah. After Hamas won the 2006 election, Egypt agreed with Israel to close the Rafah crossing.

With US assistance, Egypt constructed a steel wall on the border between Egypt and Gaza.  The area within Egypt that surrounds the crossing is now rife with members of ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, meaning Egypt frequently keeps the border closed.

There are also tunnels that are technically illegal, dangerous, difficult, and costly. Most recently, they appear principally controlled by ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt has attempted to destroy the tunnels.

The physical cutting off of Gaza has created economic and social inequalities, both between Palestinians (West Bank versus Gaza) and between Gazans and their Jewish Israeli neighbors.

Hamas’s Control

The blockades stem from Israel’s opposition to Hamas, which currently controls the Gaza Strip.

As I discussed on Monday, Hamas won the last national elections in 2006.  The Charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel.

That Charter has been in effect since 1988, and also says that “the land of Palestine is an Islamic [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon any part of it.”  (I’m sorry – I’m not going to link to the Hamas Charter. Google works if you really must read it for yourself because you don’t believe me.]

That Charter makes negotiations between Hamas and Israel pretty unlikely, and you will often hear people cite to the Hamas Charter as a reason that Israel cannot engage in sustained peace negotiations.

But, and this is significant, in 2006, after the last national elections, Hamas indicated a willingness to accept and abide by agreements reached between past Palestinian leaders and Israel. Hamas’ leadership indicated it would accept a State of Palestine within the ’67 borders (those are the ones the international community believes are the appropriate boundaries) contingent upon Israel’s recognition of Palestine as a state.

The 2006 statements seemed to indicate that Hamas would recognize Israel’s right to exist, though in 2011, Hamas’ leadership seemed to walk this back significantly, accepting the ’67 borders for Palestine without actually recognizing Israel.   

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hamas’ past statements about Israel, and the decision by Hamas’ military wing to treat all Israeli citizens as military targets (a dangerous misapplication of international law that I’ll address in another post) led Israel to denounce the election of Hamas. 

Israel and western governments chose to continue their recognition of Fatah, the party of Mahmoud Abbas, as the legitimate Palestinian government, ignoring the election.

Hamas and Fatah had long been rivals, and this chosen recognition / isolation exacerbated the division, and while there are times tentative steps to unity, for the most part Palestine is divided.  Fatah controls the West Bank, and Hamas controls the Gaza strip.

I’ve heard from several people familiar with the situation there that Hamas would be unlikely to win an additional election there due to issues of corruption. I’m no longer fully convinced of this reality, not because Hamas has reformed but because I think people are disenfranchised with all the political leadership in Palestine.

From the people in Palestine, I often get a sense of political hopelessness, a feeling that their political leaders have all abandoned them.

But changing the political landscape is currently impossible due to the divided rule. The international recognition and continued rule of Fatah as the government, something Hamas is unwilling to accept, means that the two parties are currently unwilling to work together. The physical and political isolation between the two areas means that a national election can’t happen – and won’t happen until the two factions form a unity government. If you believe in coincidences (I do not), you would find it interesting that last year’s conflict between Israel and Gaza came about just as Hamas and the ruling Fatah party in the West Bank negotiated a unity government. 

So people in Gaza have no ability to actively influence the political powers that control them. They cannot vote Hamas out – no matter how corrupt they believe it has become – and they cannot influence the political power in Israel.  So they have nothing, while seeing that their Israeli neighbors have a great deal politically.

In case you missed it, that relates to the political horizontal inequalities here.

Though this month the West Bank has erupted more frequently than Gaza, this is a rather unusual situation. The confluence of social, economic, and political inequalities between Gazans and those in the West Bank, and Gazans and their Israeli neighbors, helps to explain why Gaza is often a flash-point in the conflict here. The humanitarian crisis – the lack of shelter, food, and often medical care within Gaza – is not simply a result of the conflict, but is also an underlying cause of its continued existence.  

I’m not addressing the legal question of the occupation today.  Sometime in the near future, I’ll discuss whether Gaza can legally be considered “occupied,” but even if you fail to consider it as such, the realities Gazans face are intertwined with the political decisions of Israel. Daily life here is controlled as much (if not more) from the outside as it is from the inside, and that kind of control coupled with unequal recognition of rights breeds resentment and hostility.

Two Stabbings Does Not an Intifada Make

Today's post was going to be about Gaza, but I feel it's necessary to delay that post until tomorrow to address the current situation here.

I was supposed to go to Jerusalem the morning Israeli media declared the third Intifada was upon us. At the time, there had been two alleged stabbings in two days.

Since then, it appears from Palestinian media that at least one of those stabbings never occurred.  Instead, nineteen year old Fadi Alloun was shot by police after Jewish Israelis yelled he was stabbing someone and was a terrorist.  There was no investigation into his death, or into the alleged stabbing.  The shooting was caught on tape, and nothing indicates that Alloun had a knife on him, or posed any sense of an imminent threat, at the time he was killed.

Within 24 hours, his home had been marked for demolition. I mentioned yesterday that there is a potential for punitive house demolitions for Palestinians who violate Israel’s security laws. Let me explain briefly how it works, because I always thought I understood the issue of punitive home demolitions but it turns out I didn’t.

What I thought happened was that evidence was gathered of an individual’s guilt through the normal process of an investigation. Once sufficient evidence was gathered – not necessarily enough for an actual prosecution because I knew that didn’t always happen, but enough for at least an indictment – the military, police or prosecutor would ask a court for an order to demolish a home.  The court would grant the order, rarely denying requests but at least requiring a minimum level of evidence, and then the military would carry out the order.

Home demolitions are problematic even with this understanding. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which as I discussed is applicable to Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, prohibits collective punishments. Homes are demolished regardless of who lives in them – thereby punishing family members for what a single member did – and regardless of whether the alleged perpetrator is still alive or not, meaning at times the alleged perpetrator isn’t even amongst those punished for his crime. As a result, punitive home demolition clearly constitutes a collective punishment, inflicted not on the individual but on the family as a whole.

In case you’re tempted to think that the home demolition really is directed at the individual and not the family unit as a whole, it’s worth noting that the current Israeli Minister of Justice Ayalet Shaked once infamously shared the words of an Israeli reporter, Uri Elitzur, in which the latter labelled Palestinians, including Palestinian children, “little snakes.” For as dehumanizing as that seems in the abstract, the full quote is worse:

“They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. … Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”

The house demolitions predate Elitzur’s words and Shaked’s reign at the Ministry of Justice, but I believe they are indicative of the underlying sentiment of the house demolitions. The demolitions are not aimed at the person committing the crime, but at destroying homes where Israel fears “more little snakes will be raised.”  Regardless of the underlying belief, the act of destroying homes of Palestinian civilians without military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly constitutes a war crime.

What Actually Happens is Worse.  Remember how I thought the punitive home demolitions occurred after a sufficient investigation and with a court order?  I was wrong.

Apparently home demolitions do not require a court order.  They also don’t require an investigation.  So that young man – Fadi Alloun – despite eyewitnesses stating he hadn’t stabbed anyone but was instead the victim in a mob attack, was the focus of a demolition order.  His family, in addition to having to bury their son, has to worry about being rendered homeless.

After the Stabbings

Following media hysteria – or perhaps causing it?  Sometimes it’s hard to know the relationship of governments and nationalist media – the government cracked down on the rights of Palestinians. Entrance to East Jerusalem was limited only to Palestinians who lived there, though reports from at least some of the entrances to East Jerusalem indicated that IDs were checked discriminatorily, with a person’s looks determining how thoroughly they were checked.

The Israeli government again prohibited men under 50 from entering al-Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers.

The violence escalated.

The Mayor of Jerusalem was apparently raised in Texas (please note that was sarcastic; he was actually born and raised in Jerusalem) and thought guns would be the solution. So he encouraged Israelis to carry weapons with them to protect themselves.  You need a permit to carry a weapon with you; that permit is routinely denied to Palestinians, so he was clearly encouraging a one-sided escalation of violence.

It worked, as stabbings by Israelis against Palestinians increased, leading to an incident in which one Israeli Jewish man stabbed another Israeli Jewish man at an Ikea because the second was believed to be “an Arab.”  While Palestinians accused of stabbings are routinely killed, sometimes left to bleed out on the street, the attacker in this incidence was questioned by police without any violence. (I’m not linking or embedding pictures and videos mostly as a self-care technique to limit how much I subject myself to these images; to share them with you, I’d have to view images more than once.) 

The treatment of the Israeli man was obviously the right course of action -- it's how anyone accused of a crime should be treated if possible. It's what's demanded and expected when the accused does not pose an imminent threat. But this course of action simply needs to be extended beyond Israelis to ensure that Palestinians accused of a crime are also taken into custody without unnecessary violence.  

Between 1 October and yesterday morning, 25 Palestinians and 4 Israelis were killed in the conflict.  There have also been protests in cities like Bethlehem and Ramallah, and in refugee camps across the West Bank.  Protests by checkpoints have grown violent as Israeli soldiers fire live ammunition, rubber bullets, and teargas on protesters.  I’ve been told approximately 1/3 of those injured in Ramallah were shot with live ammunition.

Most of those who have been killed on the Palestinian side are under 25 years old. Several have been 13 years old.

But Seriously… Two Stabbings Does Not an Intifada Make.

Watching the escalation of violence up close (though still with a great deal of distance as I am not present at the protests) has been mystifying because, seriously, I cannot say this enough, but two stabbings do not make an Intifada, and never should have been treated as such.

It’s an escalation of violence. It is part of the cycle that occurs when you isolate a population, degrade them, and them blame then every time any one of them violently resists.

But the Palestinian leadership has not taken up arms, and instead has functioned as a buffer between the Palestinians and the State of Israel.  There is no Katniss Everdeen of the Palestinian Authority who is taking widespread resentment and turning it into action. This sits in stark contrast to the two earlier Intifadas, when Yasser Arafat, an experienced military leader, led the charge on the Palestinian side and turned low-level violence into an actual armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Without that leadership, you do not have an Intifada. You have low-level violence.  That’s what Israel was faced with 10 days ago.

The immediate clampdown on all Palestinians whenever one or two are involved in hate crimes (and the assumption that they are hate crimes as soon as a Palestinian is involved, while they’re just accidental stabbings or legitimate self-defense when Israelis are involved) is problematic legally, politically, and morally.

Let’s start with the legal part.  Collective punishments are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. It’s also a breach of one of the core principles of human rights law – that you cannot discriminate against people based solely on immutable characteristics, like race or ethnicity.  We have a right to be judged on our actions alone, not on the fact that we look like someone else.

White men are able to understand this when women in the US complain about the patriarchy. The response is always a resounding “not all men are like that” (yes, I know what I linked to).  

Police officers do the same whenever complaints emerge about brutality in the US. The immediate response: not all police are racist (seriously, watch the Daily Show clip – it’s really good).

No freaking kidding.

We know – at least whenever we are the victims – that we should never be judged based on the actions of another. 

And that’s the moral issue – we know that treating a collective population as a monolithic being is morally wrong.

It also creates resentment, and that resentment leads to violence, which is why the response is also politically wrong. 

By assuming all Palestinians are terrorists (or terrorist-supporters or terrorist-lovers or… whatever hyphenate you want to follow “terrorist”), the Israeli response to two stabbings creates resentment. 

That resentment piles on top of the resentment already experienced because of discriminatory land access, limitations on free movement and access to holy sites, and a denial of the promise of Oslo that 15 years ago Palestinians would have their own autonomy and sovereignty.

And it’s not surprising that violence spirals.

Palestinian protesters outside an Israeli checkpoint by Ramallah

On that, I need to say one final thought, related to the “bombshell” of a speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly.  Abbas gave voice to the frustration of Palestinians who feel they are routinely required to abide by the Oslo agreements while Israel is not obligated to do the same.  He indicated that if the Palestinians do not see a commitment by Israel to the Oslo Agreements, they will stop abiding by the treaty as well.  What kinds of commitment does Israel need to show?  Well, Oslo provided for many things, but most notably that Palestine will be given an opportunity for full sovereignty and that negotiations over the status of Jerusalem (note: the entirety of Jerusalem, not just the status of East Jerusalem). 

By governing East Jerusalem without regard for Palestinian rights, it appears Israel is attempting to effectuate a coup over the city’s boundaries.  Stopping the eviction of Palestinians, and the building of Jewish-only neighborhoods is one way in which Israel can abide by Oslo.  Withdrawing to the ’67 border is another.  Resuming peace talks on the final status of Jerusalem is a third. 

The ball is in Israel’s court to stop this low-level violence from turning into something more.  Because if the only thing stopping an armed conflict is the absence of a Katniss Everdeen, Israel will eventually be faced with a real conflict.   

The way to do that is not to clamp down further on Palestinians – as Netanyahu’s government has suggested – but rather to engage in Oslo and work for a sustainable peace.

I am well aware there’s another side to this conflict.

I am hoping to interview people in Israel for my research, and assume those interviews will turn into interesting conversations about the conflict. But since I’ve arrived the violence has prevented me from going anywhere.  I’ve had three trips to Jerusalem and a trip to Tel Aviv cancelled.  So at some point, I will likely provide an idea of how this conflict is viewed from the Israeli side – and I have some thoughts already on that related to Netanyahu’s speech at the UN, and comments from friends – but for now, I can only rely on Israeli media reports and I too often find them wanting.

A Note to Our American Readers

Now, I started writing about the Palestinian experience in part so that my American friends and family could understand what I'm working on and what I'm going to be doing here. And so I really briefly want to say something to that American audience ahead of our own elections. When Republicans talk about modelling our anti-terrorism efforts off of Israel, it shows they have no clue what they are talking about.

In the days following 9/11, I remember people discussing the need to follow Israel’s lead on anti-terrorism because Israel had been “dealing with this for sixty years.”  At the time I was flabbergasted – wouldn’t you want to model you response off a state that hasn’t been dealing with it for 6 decades, and instead choose a state that successfully engaged on anti-terrorism issues and now no longer needed to?  Some place like Switzerland or Belgium or Spain.  We don’t need to model our response to terrorism on a state that not only fails to combat it effectively but that takes actions that encourage unrest and violence.  

When Republican candidates point to Israel as the model for our anti-terrorism efforts, it proves they know little about terrorism and less about how to fight it effectively.