2. Addressing Root Causes of the Current Intifada
The current intifada must be placed in the context of more than 50 years of ongoing international efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of international law and human rights. Starting with General Assembly Resolution 181(II) in 1947, the UN has explicitly recognized and supported the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Security Council Resolution 242, which provided the legal basis for the Oslo peace process, affirmed the requirement that Israel end its occupation of the OPT.
The HRIC report accurately highlights the decisive role of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and rejection of Palestinian self-determination and statehood as the basis for all other rights violations:
It is of pervasive significance that the Palestinian people are struggling to realize their right to self-determination, which by virtue of international law and morality provides the foundation for the exercise of other rights. Of comparable significance is the appreciation of the extent to which Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories has remained the most formidable obstacle to Palestinian self-determination. (p. 7, para. 11)
While Israel’s occupation is the underlying cause of the current crisis, the more immediate cause is its policy of expropriating land for settlements and depriving Palestinians of free movement and economic opportunity through closure. Under the Oslo peace process, Israel extended rather than ended its occupation and control over the OPT. The number of illegal Jewish settlers more than doubled to 380,000, including 180,000 in East Jerusalem alone. These settlements are connected to each other and to Israel through an extensive, ever-expanding system of highways that fragment Palestinian territory into hundreds of non-contiguous units, in clear breach of Resolution 242 and of provisions in the Oslo agreements requiring both parties to respect “the territorial integrity and unity of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Even more damaging, Israel instituted a comprehensive system of military checkpoints throughout the OPT to control the movement of people and goods through discriminatory issuance of passes and permits for Palestinians only. Israel’s closure policy has crippled the Palestinian economy since 1993 and resulted in grave violations of human rights. Numerous UN human rights bodies have recognized these Israeli policies as illegal and posing a major obstacle to a just peace. For example, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recently concluded that “closures have cut off Palestinians from their own land and resources resulting in widespread violations of their economic, social and cultural rights.” (CESCR E/C.12.1/Add.27)
The HRIC draws attention to the interconnection between settlements, denial of self-determination, and the current intifada:
Settlements are a major obstacle in the way of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. First, they virtually foreclose the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, as they, together with the road system connecting them, destroy the territorial integrity of Palestine. In this sense, they act as a major impediment to the exercise of the right to self-determination within the internationally-recognized self-determination unit of Palestine, i.e. the territory occupied by Israel after the 1967 war. Secondly, the settlements provide daily evidence of the violations of international law and the failure of the international community, acting through the United Nations and the High Contracting Parties of the Geneva Conventions, to remedy such a situation. The despair and cynicism in the Palestinian community about the willingness of the international community to enforce the rule of law is in large measure due to its failure to halt the growth of the settler population and to persuade the Israeli Government to reverse this practice. The link between settlements and the present intifada is clear. Many of the acts of violence carried out by the IDF and settlers, that have resulted in Palestinian deaths and injuries, have occurred on the heavily defended roads leading to the settlements or in the proximity of the settlements. (p. 26, para. 7-8)
