Occupying by law

As a student in Israel really interested in what is happening in the Occupied territories when I saw the documental ‘the land in these parts’  directed by Ra´anan Alexandrowicz I discovered a new face of the occupation: the occupation done by the law.

Nowadays the wars and the ways of occupation have seen important transformations. One should know that the countries fight in the battlefield but also in the media and in the legal spheres.

In this case, the documental showed how the Israelis developed a divided legal system. One for the territories, under the martial law, and another one for Israel, under civil law. This division created an unfair situation for the Palestinians since the arrived of the Israeli army in 1967.

I know Palestinians, I met different people when I was in Hebron, Nablus or Ramallah, and I remembered most of them when I saw this strong documental. In the film one can see how the heads of the Israeli legal institutions made decisions that transformed the life of the Palestinians and how the legal system helped, in a way, the different governments in order to develop new settlements, demolish Palestinian houses, blow up Palestinian lands during the process of creating a new outpost and putting in jail not only terrorist but also political activists.

The documental is really moving because one can see images from the past,  the eruption of the Hebron clashes, the birth of the first intifada and the faces of the members of Israel´s military legal corps,  the responsible of dealing with the law during the time of occupation.

As the title of the documental says the law has his parts. In this case nowadays we can still see the differences in both sides. When a settler in Hebron tries to hit a Palestinian the soldiers, more than 2.000 in the city, can´t do anything because this settlers are under the civil law of Israel. In the same situation if a Palestinian tries to hit a settler the soldiers has the legitimacy to act against him.

The documental has a principle question: Can a modern democracy impose a prolonged military occupation on another people while retaining its core democratic values?

After 45 years of occupation, two intifadas, a peace process that never ends, more settlements and a big historical UN resolutions violations  made by Israel, the State should think in answer this and other questions and finding new ways of solving long term problems.

In the documental some of the member of Israeli´s military they said that they were members of a system with who they felt unable to create a change. But in fact, some of them, as the president of the Supreme Court, were in the position of promoting changes within the system and had enough influence in the political system. Another question is if they wanted or not… 

For additional information :

• The law in these parts