Transcribed into English by Michael Haddad

Noura Erakat (NE): Hello and welcome, I am Noura Erakat, on behalf of Jadaliyya and Status Hour, here with Omar Shakir Israel-Palestine country director for Human Rights Watch. Welcome to the program Omar. 

Omar Shakir (OS): Thank you for having me, Noura. 

NE: So in mid-July 2016 Human Rights Watch applied to Israel’s Ministry of the Interior for a work permit for Omar. Nearly six months later on February 20^th 2017, the Ministry denied the request claiming that Human Rights Watch’s public activities and reports have “engaged in politics in the service of Palestinian propaganda while falsely raising the banner of Human Rights.” The Ministry refused to review the decision after Human Rights Watch appealed it citing “no special circumstances warrant authorizing Omar’s entry into the country.” Israel has refused Human Rights Watch access to the Gaza strip since 2010 with one exception in 2016, but this refusal to enter the West Bank marks a new precedent. The West Bank and the Gaza strip in Palestine in general is not alone on the list of excluded countries where Human Rights Watch is limited access. Other countries that have refused access to Human Rights Watch include Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. Here with us is Omar Shakir to discuss this. He investigates human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Prior to his current role, he was a Birtha fellow at the center of Constitutional Rights where he focused on US counter terrorism policies including legal representation of Guantanamo detainees as the 2013-14 Finberg fellow at Human Rights Watch, he investigated violations in Egypt including the Rabaa massacre, one of the largest killings of protesters in a single day. During his legal studies at Stanford Law School, Omar co-authored a report on the civilian consequences of US drone strikes in Pakistan. Omar, your human rights work and commitment is vast and deep, and now as you embark on this new part of your journey where you’re applying those skills in Israel and Palestine, you’re obviously faced with the very real political realities that that line    characterized human rights advocacy work. Can you please tell us a little more about your ordeal and how your case stands?

OS: Sure. So, before I take you down my post, which is to be based in Jerusalem/Ramallah, we applied for a work permit, so that I may take up my post on the ground and be able to engage fully with Israeli and Palestinian partners, civil society and to have direct access to those that experience human rights violations on an everyday basis. We had hoped that this would come through in October so I could immediately relocate, however, we received delay after delay and it was really difficult to make sense of the cause behind that delay. In December, I actually had confirmed meetings including with a representative of the Israeli government, but the Interior Ministry at the time would not assure me that I would have been allowed entry if I arrived at Ben-Gurion airport, so we ultimately had to cancel that meeting and that planned trip in December. We finally received a response on February 20^th and it was a denial, and particularly galling was the explanation for that denial which was the claim that Human Rights Watch was engaged in propaganda masquerading as human rights advocacy. It was galling for many reasons in part as a result of the fact that Human Rights Watch reports from every other country in the Middle East and North Africa. We document abuses in over 90 countries across the world. We cover abuses committed by all parties while we certainly have a number of publications and research that focus on abuses by the Israeli authorities. We have also documented abuses by the Palestinian Authority, by Hamas. Again not to say that there’s a parity in those abuses, but we, as in all conflicts, look at abuses that effect human rights victims that come from all different backgrounds, but also we’ve had longstanding professional engagements with Israeli authorizes like any other government we work with, so we were very surprised to see that denial. Of course after the news broke, the Israeli authorities immediately started backtracking saying that they would reconsider the work permit decision if we appealed and that in the interim they would allow me to enter for a visit on a tourist visa. Those were statements made by the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry as well as by the Israeli Embassy in Washington, so based on those statements we requested access for me to arrive for a short-term visit, however the following week we received a letter informing us that I was not authorized to enter the country and claiming that the same explanation was given about Human Rights Watch characterizing it in similar terms and again immediately after the news broke, within minutes the Foreign Ministry claimed that the letter was sent in error and that I was of course welcome to enter on a tourist visa so we are left with a confounding situation where clearly Israeli authorities are unable to distinguish between justified criticism of Israeli policy based on well documented research and political propaganda and you know the failure to allow us to access the country on multiple occasions now really raised the question of you know, what does I have to hide and why is serious scrutiny, if it’s human rights record something that would lead them to bar access to Human Rights Watch, which as you mentioned in your introduction is a move that puts it in a camp with the among the most repressive countries that we work in. We have offices and staff based in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Tunisia, yet Israel, which you know claims it’s the only democracy in the Middle East has now taken a step that these states have not yet taken, really putting it in a camp with some really unsavory actors.

NE: You raise a really good point Omar, and it’s actually resonant with now what the new – what Trump’s ambassador to the UN Nikki Hailey is saying which is that one of her – one of the trademarks that she wants to make in her career as the US ambassador to the UN is to combat the bias at the – within the UN and the Human Rights Council is particular against Israel and so bringing up this issue one begins to think: are these valid or not? And the record, Israel’s treatment of Human Rights Watch, Israel’s critique of the Human rights Council is actually not unique. It fits in a legacy, a very long legacy for Israel. In 2001 it boycotted the world conference against racism in Durban, South Africa. In 2004 it refused to participate in the International Court of Justice proceedings on the root of the separation barrier or the apartheid wall. In 2008 it denied entry for Richard Faulk the Special Repeture to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In 2009 it refuse to cooperate with the Human Rights Council’s fact finding delegation to the Gaza strip in the aftermath of Operation Castlead. In 2013, it unilaterally pulled out of the Universal Periodic Review separate, cause those are all UN mechanisms or derivative of it, but it also has refuse to ratify the Rome Statue that brings the International Criminal Court into being because it argues that Article VIII of the Rome Statute, which reiterates the criminality of civilian settlements in occupied territories is also politicized and pointed. So thinking about this it would seem that Israel is more concerned with external scrutiny and human rights generally than it is with Human Rights Watch’s political approach and so maybe there is more to be said about that given what Israel is doing domestically. Even domestically in July 2016 the Knesset passed a new law that imposes onerous reporting requirements on Israeli human rights organizations critical of the government domestically. So you raise the questions what does Israel have to hide, and you know Israel’s strategy has been, “well, let’s just attack all of human rights in general.” What would you make of these concerns and how has Human Rights Watch tryed to address them in the past.

OS: I think that’s an excellent point Noura. I mean I think to ignore the larger context would really be to miss the story. This is not necessarily an exceptional event taking into account the larger climate in Israel and Palestine. Certainly for us as Human Rights Watch it was an ominous term given that we’ve had, at least to Israel and West Bank that as you noted in the outset Gaza is different. We’ve had regular access for nearly three decades but certainly that’s not been the case with many other international bodies that have sought to look more deeply at Israel’s troubling human rights record. So I think understanding the context starts with the domestic scene. With Human Rights defenders in Israel and in Palestine in addition to law that you mentioned, we have cases of Israeli human rights groups like Beit Salem or Breaking the Silence that have been accused of slander or of discrediting the state or its institutions for its criticism of particular policies and when you look at Palestinian rights defenders they’ve seen much worse, they’ve been subjected in some cases to travel restrictions and even arrest and criminal charges. Today you have Paletinian rights defenders that are facing what in many cases amounts to trumped up charges as a result of their human rights work and of course you also have Palestinian right defenders from anonymous sources receiving anonymous death threats for the work that they are doing. Certainly when you look at it on an International scale certainly we’ve seen Israel not only block access for recognized UN and other international bodies, but really limit their – not follow UN resolutions including the most recent resolution passed in December unanimously by the Security council regarding the illegality of settlements. Israel showed no respect for International law and for the consensus international opinion when it immediately announced, within weeks, that it was going to not only dramatically increase settlements in blocks and outside of settlement blocks but then outrageously passing a law that allows for the retro-appropriation or theft in other words of privately owned Palestinian land setting the stage for many unauthorized outpost to eventually be integrated in a legal sense within the Israeli system. And of course, everything I just said doesn’t even account for Gaza, right. In Gaza, one aspect of the closure that hasn’t received as much attention is that Israel has virtually blocked human rights organizations from having access to the Gaza Strip and since 2010 Human Rights Watch has only been granted permission a single time by the Israeli authorities to enter Gaza and it’s not just the International Human Rights Organizations, it’s the Palestinian groups within Gaza that themselves have been subjected to incredible limitations. So you have this crippling closure of Gaza where Palestinian citizens of Gaza are not able effectively to travel outside or inside and where you have supplies not able to come in and out, but you also have Human Rights groups that aren’t able to carry out their missions in documenting abuses by all parties. Primarily of course Israel but also by Hamas regarding what’s happening in the Gaza strip and one of the arguments that Israel has made to the International Criminal Court to say that the International Criminal Court should not further look into abuses that take place in the territory of Palestine. Is that human rights groups have access and are able to document these abuses at the very same time that it’s virtually sealing off the Gaza Strip not only for Palestinians but also for international groups that are trying to do work there. For us at Human Rights Watch, we have local staff on the ground in Gaza and in my capacity as Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch, that’s part of my mandate but I have to rely on working remotely with local staff as a result of the limitations not just on my ability to enter Israel or the West Bank, but even if Israel were to relent and to eventually allow us to enter on a tourist visa or to have a work permit, there is a separate question of having access to Gaza and not just now, but at time where their may be active armed conflict between Israeli forces and Hamas.

NE: Certainly Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, but on this point, Omar you’re raising a really critical issue, which is one about the state of Human Rights and of the way that it’s regulated. When Israel attacks this broad – what seems like a broad attack domesticly against human rights defenders, internationally against multilateral organizations, the ICC, and the United Nations and its various human rights treaty bodies, it’s basically making a frontal attack on human rights and substance and inform in a way that risks taking down the entire framework as a way to shield itself from scrutiny and so how do you feel that impacts the work generally and the state of human rights work generally given that Israel isn’t, for example, a small negligible country that’s already deemed a rouge state by the West, but instead, Israel is very significant. It’s the US’s self-proclaimed most unique ally in the Middle East. You mentioned that it’s regarded as the only Democracy in the Middle East. It is the only Nuclear power in the Middle East, and so these things make us have to pay attention that these attacks Israel is making on Human Rights isn’t just compromising the work in Palestine or for Palestinians and Israeli’s, but it’s compromising the work for human rights generally. What would you make of that? 

OS: So in some ways Israel’s – the Israeli authorities claim that Human Rights Watch was engaged in propaganda masquerading as human rights advocacy wasn’t unique, I mean it’s the same kind of argument we’ve heard from the Egyptian Authorities for example when I covered Egypt in the aftermath of the 2013 coup and amid serious violations of human rights there. They’ve made similar claims. We’ve heard similar claims made in some of the other countries that we work in but what I think makes it unique is the point that you made that Israel, as part of its message that it puts out to the international community, talks about its commitment to democratic values and I think that’s obviously inconsistent with these sorts of activities, but I also think that there is a larger climate now in the world and it’s not just in the United States under the Trump administration. I think some of it has to do with the ascendency of Russia. Some of it has to do though with the role of states like Turkey, which have an important regional influence and are increasingly becoming more oppressive by the day with mass arrests of journalists, dissidents, and others. If you look across the different regions across the world, you see a rise in populism. A form of populism that defines national interests in a way that juxtaposes it with commitments to international bodies and international communities and as a result values like human rights in international law, which are part of the fabric of the international system. So I think if you really take a step back and you contextualize what Israel is doing in the context of where the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Turkey, so many other countries are moving, certainly within the region with the resurgence of Assad’s Syria, with Sisi and elsewhere, you really see a troubling situation across the globe where you have a rise of a form of populism that seems to as part of its creed, undermine human rights which has long been considered a universal value and that certainly has an effect. Human Rights Watch at its core, our methodology, involves the idea of shining a light on the darkest practices that take place across the globe. Our belief is that if you put a spotlight on terrible abuse you bring it out in the open you will create pressure to then generate change. Of course we also engage in advocacy to try and bring that change about. But if you are in a world now where governments are not shamed or governments don’t feel the need to heed international pressure, that’s really scary to what human rights practice may look like across the region and across the world in the coming 4-8 years and again it’s not exclusive to the Trump administration. We saw worrying trends under the prior administration in the United States on a range of issues, and certainly Israel is not just a result of the very rightwing coalition that’s in place there. We’ve seen abuses and disregard for international institutions as you mentioned that took place under different governments, but certainly it’s quite worrying and it’s something that I think those of us that are concerned about human rights and democratic values and social justice across the globe need to be actively thinking about.

NE: You raise a really great point which is the diminishing relatives of the shaming tactics the diminishing relative, the relevance of what can be considered human rights abuses and I think if one were to think about it – here where we are in the United States I’m speaking from Virginia, you’re in NY. I’m  thinking about the diminishing relative of fact and truth and what I think becomes salient in terms of shaping our thinking and taking that to scale as you have in your comment and thinking about right – human rights is just not going to be as compelling with regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere that are defining justice in very nuanced, localized, nationalist terms. So that also brings me to this question about your Human Rights Watch’s philosophy to date, which is you want to shine a light on the darkest practices all over the world. To do that you have had to get the voluntary compliance of the States where you want to go into with your flash light and that creates a significant challenge, because on the one hand, you want to apply pressure on the State. On the other hand, you can’t apply too much pressure because you want to continue to be granted their voluntary participation. How do you balance that? And you’ve had to balance that in several contexts, you’ve mentioned Egypt, but you’ve worked on the issue of representing Guantanamo detainees of the United States or by the United States. You’ve investigated the use of drone strikes on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. You’ve gone into Pakistan, so you’ve had to deal with this tenuous balance in several contexts, so can you tell us a little bit about that and what that means for human rights advocacy and advocates?

OS: Sure. It’s an interesting question to ask me because I’ve had a track record of getting access denied, whether it’d be Egypt or now in Israel. I’ve had issues before in Syria when I lived there.

NE: Tell us a little bit about how you were denied in Egypt.

OS: Well in Egypt we released -- we spent a year documenting mass killing carried out by the Egyptian government after the coup including the Raaba massacre, one of the largest single day killings of protesters in modern world history. You had over 800 Egyptians killed in the span of 12 hours on August 14^th 2013, so I as Human Rights Watch at the time, with colleagues, documented those killings and we determined that they were crimes against humanity and we were able to establish the link that this was a planned massacre carried out at the highest levels of the Egyptian government. Like with other regimes, what comes to mind is China around Tiananmen, Egypt really clamped down on even reference to talking about Raaba and what happened on that day and so we documented crimes against humanity and the role of senior Egyptian officials in carrying out those massacres which we determined to be planned massacres that were planned by the Egyptian authorities including by then Defense Minister and now President Abdul Fatah al Sisi so we prepared a report on our findings which we shared with the Egyptian authorities. We sent our findings to them several months in advance and sought their comment. We received no response and we came to Cairo to release the report. We planned the launch that included journalists, leading NGO’s and advocacy meetings and the head of Human Rights Watch Ken Roth in the Middle East/North Africa Director Sarah-Lee Woodson were due to meet me in Cairo on the one year anniversary, just ahead of the one year anniversary of the massacre to release the report. Ken and Sarah-Lee were both denied entry on arrival at Cairo airport then they were detained and then deported that evening. I had been allowed entry that day into the country. I had been based mostly that year in Cairo but as the security climate tightened I was in and out and I left the same time and the next day when we release the report, we faced a barrage of similar types of accusations that Israel is now making about us being propaganda. They claimed for the Muslim brotherhood and that has resulted since in Human Rights Watch not having – we used to have an office in Cairo and have relatively open access and that has not been the case since then. Going back to your question about guarding this question of access. I think every international organization debates this question of access versus carrying out your mandate and having impact. So on one extreme end of the scaling of a group like the ICRC the Red Cross, which airs all the way on the side of access to the point where they wont criticize –rarely ever either side – there interventions are confidential so they are given access everywhere. Guantanamo, you know, in places across the Middle East where many other groups can enter because governments know that they will stay confidential. We’re more on the other side of the spectrum. In fact we might be the opposite pole of that spectrum in the sense that our mandate at its core involves exposing fact finding and exposing abuse and then advocating for change, so our key principle is consistency, so we will not change the results of our research and our findings because we want access to a country. That is very clear. And we have the ability as an international organization headquartered in New York when we operate in a place like Cairo to be able to release findings that maybe local groups aren’t able to make because they face threats that could include not only imprisonment of family etcetera, but could be a lot more severe so we take that as an obligation to make sure that we’re consistent and that we’re not pulling back from research because we are concerned about access. That is something that we stick to even if it means the door being shut on us. Now, just because we aren’t being formally allowed access, doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t do our work. We find other ways of doing it. We make different arrangements on a case-by-case basis, some of which involves entry in different ways, some of which involves using local staff or using other sorts of evidence to make our claims, so we will always err on the side of being consistent. That said, we are trying to have an impact. We’re not just trying to set a record when we release our reports and sometimes to have impact with different audiences you need to use tones that will work with them and so the question of tone and how we use tone will depend who our advocacy target is. So we will make calculations around who the key decision makers are and where there may be opportunities to have influence and that will frame the way in which we think about tone and how we frame things, but in terms of the substance of our work and our findings, that is consistent and if the government chooses based on our well-researched findings to deny us entry, that doesn’t stop us from doing our work. We just will find different ways to do it.

NE: So its really interesting because there is a commitment to the core work, there is a commitment to application of human rights regardless of where it is. Regardless of who it’s committed by and yet obviously it’s still a very very politicized issue and one of the things Human Rights Watch has faced critique both for often times pandering to these critiques to what it may consider absolutely necessary and often times because of its own internal logic because of what it thinks the application of human rights looks like and so Human Rights Watch has been criticized, not only by States, these States that want -- are protesting its findings, but also by individuals who find that their just not satisfied with what seems like a apolitical approach or perhaps vulnerability to donors. At the end of the day the organization that doesn’t function on its own but is entwined and imbricated in these fundraising networks and these political networks and so you have yet another hurdle and challenge to overcome. How do you find yourself navigating that terrain with individuals who have individuals and organizations who take issue with Human Rights Watch’s work? 

OS: Sure so I think – look Human Rights Watch as part of our mission and that’s not a mission that everybody will agree with, is that we don’t take positions that are political or that are taking sides in say a war. So Human Rights Watch for example and it’s a position that was criticized and I think that criticism certainly raises good points. So how could you say, for example, Human Rights Watch not oppose the War on Iraq or not take a position, maybe most controversially, on the occupation itself because occupation, like war, under international law, there is a regime to document that aspect of it, but our focus is documenting abuses within conflict, within war, or within occupation as opposed to sort of challenging the fact of that occupation. That’s sort of something we set out, and that’s sort of how we intervene, so that is an approach that I think everybody would agree with, but we also don’t aspire to be the only actor that acts on issues and I think it’s valuable to have different groups that will chime in on those issues, but our intersection point will be documenting the abuses in the context of war occupation. So for us for example, settlements are a war crime and they are very clear black-letter violation of the 4^th Geneva Convention and of course they also, at its core, involve a significant litany of associated human rights abuses of Palestinians. And so that would be our intersection point. Instead of challenging the fact of that occupation or the fact of that war and I think, for us, that position is a principled one and it’s one that allows us to really document abuses and to be able to be impartial to the extent that’s possible in very difficult situations and I think part of the credibility for our voice is that commitment to objective independent research. Including not taking money from governments and really being able to set our own research agenda and in terms of fund raising I think there is always innuendo and suggestions, but I can say with confidence that, in my time as Israel/Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, never have concerns of donors or other funders impacted the way I‘ve conceived of my research agenda or carried out my research and I felt the same way in doing the work on Egypt. That I had the mandate and the commitment across the organization to go about doing the work that we felt was important to all human rights victims on the ground. Now we also criticize the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and that’s not to suggest that there’s a parity between their abuses and that of the Israeli occupation. I think that’s clear that’s not the case nor is it our objective to sit and count how many report we have done on Israel and compare that to how many we’ve done on the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, but rather there are very concerning trends in the West Bank and Gaza that need to be documented and exposed. Those include arbitrary detention of journalists and of dissidence both by the Palestinian Authority and by Hamas. They include torture and other abuse of detainees. They include in Gaza executions and death sentences being issued at alarming rates and they include a whole set of other practices that are very very concerning so we will document those abuses, but not because we’re in search of satisfying particular constituents or donors, or because we feel we need that to give us legitimacy to criticize Israeli action, but rather because they effect real people’s lives on the ground and in important ways and for example in Gaza in January you had hundreds of people take to the streets to protest the fact that they only receive 3-4 hours of electricity on many days and in Jabalia camp and otherwise and while certainly Israel has fundamental responsibility as the occupying power to provide electricity, much of that anger was directed at the governing authority in Gaza which includes Hamas and in response we saw dozens of dissidents arrested by Hamas. We see similar trends in the West Bank where you have the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas not only arresting members of Hamas, but even those from other factions that are perceived to pose a challenge to the Palestinian Authority itself. Those are important abuses. They effect real people’s lives and they are violations of binding international humanitarian Human Rights Law which fall within the core of our mandate so we will continue to document those abuses just as we document the many abuses carried out by the Israeli government in Israel itself and in the West Bank and in Gaza.

NE: You bring up really good points an so it’s not human rights mandate to declare that, for example, the occupation is illegal or a war is illegal, that certainly becomes the onus for the rest of us the pressure that the rest of us can be placing on – or you know – international human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch who I think we have a duty to also push to take those positions but in regards to the way that this plays out and how it implicates real people’s lives. There is always going to be a balance about the individual experience and the context in which that experience is happening in order to make and proscribe the most responsible interventions and I don’t know that it impacts the substance of what you document as much as it’s going to impact the substance of what’s recommended and often times recommendation as we know can do more harm than good, but you bring up really excellent points and set the tone for us to be thinking about what is our responsibility in even working together with Human Rights Watch and other international human rights organizations doing this work. So Omar on that note I just want to ask you: What are your next steps regarding your work and what should we be on the lookout for? 

OS: Sure. I just want to say one comment about what you said which I agree whole-heartedly with. I think when it comes to those of us in the world that care about the advancement about universal human rights, we have to understand that different groups have different contributions to make and that there is a value in these different mix of methodologies and approaches. The answer is not to find one organization that does it all or says it all, but rather to see it as part of something that’s larger and part of a larger human rights movement and to understand that the role of those groups in that context, so in terms of our research agenda look, we have I think we have several major priorities and I think things look forward to – I think one is we continue to work around settlement businesses and continue to look at – we’ve released a report in January 2016 called “occupation inc” which set out why doing business in settlements is a violation of international law. How it involves both contributes to and benefits from a system of two tier system, a discriminatory system which takes place in the West Bank and how it involves other policies including land confiscation and dispossession of Palestinians so for Human Rights Watch, we call on that report for a cessation of business activities in settlement and since releasing that report we’ve continued to do advocacy that targets particular industries that are involved in operating businesses in settlements. We did a report in September of 2016 that looked at the role of FIFA its sponsoring matches on pitches that are in settlements. In one case that we documented on land of a family where members of that family play football and their pursuit of playing football has been impeded by that settlement and settlement pitch. We are also looking at the role of Israeli banks and providing infrastructure and support for the operation of settlement businesses, which is a forth coming publication that we are looking into. We are also doing work on the closure of Gaza. We’ll have a report forthcoming about the access of human rights organizations and how that has been limited as a result of the closure of Gaza and we’ll continue to do research that helps shed light on the significant effects the closure has on the lives of the Palestinians from Gaza including looking at areas like water and electricity from a human rights perspective. We are also looking at arbitrary detention and torture by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and that continues to a be an area of research focus that will continue to look into and of course this year is significant because it marks the 50^th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank Gaza and of course other territories as well and we have several pieces of research that will help elaborate on what the reality of today looks like on the ground including looking at issues like the revocation of residency rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem and elsewhere as well as looking at home demolitions in Israel as well as the West Bank. And it’s also starting to think through what is 50 years of occupation mean from a human rights perspective? Under international humanitarian law, occupation -- the framework of occupation law is meant to protect the rights of the indigenous people. To protect their resources etcetera so that when an occupation ends, that population can eventually inherit those things again. But what does that mean in the context of a permanent occupation? International humanitarian law allows the occupying power to suspend, in some cases temporarily, rights in the name of security but all that can be a measure that’s taken for short-term occupation. Does it have the same credence 50 years of occupation later? Take a practice like administrative detention, which is only legal when it’s temporary and exceptional. Is Israel’s practice of administrative detention in its 50^th year of occupation where over 500 Palestinians as of January 2017 are being held in administrative detention, is Israel meeting this standard? I think clearly it is not so I think there are larger questions for us as a community of international lawyers as human rights activist to really think through what  -- not only the date 50 years, but what is permanent occupation and at a time in which the Israeli authorities are very openly speaking about there desires to annex parts of the West Bank, maybe even the entire West Bank. What does that mean in terms of human rights protection? How can we as advocates most effectively use the legal tools to advance an agenda of human rights protection for all people?

NE: Your work is cut out for you Omar. There is a lot to be done on this. One, it’s a long list that you mention, but I don’t think one that necessarily is insurmountable because of their interrelatedness and the fact that you are building on Human Rights Watch’s legacy of already doing that work, but on the later question that you pose about the permanency of occupation which is meant to be short term in nature and to facilitate a transition to a status quo ante, you know, before the beginning of hostilities, that the questions that you raise are also being I think thought about not only by the human rights advocates and scholars so to speak but also by Israeli’s themselves and so for those that have been paying attention in the aftermath of the Security Council resolution 2334 which you mentioned earlier in the interview and the present as we saw the ratification of the regularization law, we’re seeing a revival of a discourse amongst Israeli’s that there is no occupation. So in response the question you raise about the 50 years, the responses, well – what 50 years? There has never been an occupation to begin with. Jewish sovereignty is extended to these territories. What happened in 1967 wasn’t the occupation of those territories, but the liberation from Arabs and their reversion to Jewish sovereignty and one has think about that, even that argument is based in a legal argument that is articulated by Labor Government that’s rearticulated by a Hebrew University Israeli Law professor in 1968 and then enshrined by Israel’s military government years later in 1971 by Mear Shimgar who comes to become the Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court for about two decades and so all of this is also immersed. Even the response to the question of the legality 50 years occupation the response to it is also a legal argument that one that Israeli’s have made that there isn’t an occupation and so the work is not only to figure out to the enduring nature of the occupation but also how to response to the legal strategies that are deployed in order to facilitate its nature, its permanency. 

OS: I think that’s right. I think it’s important to think about because of the way the discourse has continued to be in the international community. Right? There’s been this obsession around this idea of a two state solution in a way that’s – and again not talking about solutions because as human rights advocates, we don’t take positions on one state, two states, three states, four states, whatever the answer is, but the reality is focusing on the idea of occupation itself and around the associated solutions to that. I think in a lot of cases misses reality on the ground, and that conversation, especially the obsession by the US GOV and some in the international community, the two state solution often provides cover for the failure to address Israeli human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza that have stunted Palestine’s economic development and really at a fundamental level that undermine the basic dignity and autonomy of five million Palestinians that live under Israeli occupation and people oppose Israeli policies, even at an international level, because they     interfere with this goal of separating the two peoples not because settlements are war crimes under international humanitarian law, not because they involve seizure of Palestinian land, not because these policies, on a very basic and fundamental level upend daily Palestinian life. Whether it be freedom of movement. Whether it be the ability to have livelihoods, to have farms or to have natural resources, to go to school, to have a family that can be politically active without worrying about losing a son or a mother to detention. So I think it’s important that our conversation is enriched and it’s not just focused on solutions or around whether or not something is occupied, but really at the fundamental level, look at the ground, Today you have the US government, well maybe not today, but the US government as of a month ago or as six weeks ago or two months ago and the UN and other bodies that are very openly saying that what’s happening on the ground, the reality is one governing power, which is the Israeli authorities, that in effect power between  --  in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel in more or less permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, conducting one set of policies that are driven by creating separate and unequal systems that are based around ethnicity and origin. That’s the reality on the ground so our conversation needs to start from that point and acknowledge what’s happening and work to address that reality in a way that protects the human rights of all peoples on the ground and that is not allowing discourse of framework to shift attention from that.

NE: Thank you so much Omar. It has been a pleasure to speak with you. We are definitely going to keep and eye out on your movement and the work that you’re producing on behalf of Human Rights Watch and the human rights advocacy that you continue to do. Thank you so much for joining us.

OS: Thank you for having me, it’s always an honor to talk to you, Noura.