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George Bisharat
Professor of Law, University of California-Hastings The Supreme Court’s decision, following Israel’s occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip (as well as Sinai and the Golan Heights) in
1967, to accept petitions from residents of the Occupied Territories
doubtless earned it plaudits from many liberal observers, both within
and outside Israel. But forty years on its efforts to sanitize an
unmistakably brutal and dehumanizing military occupation and colonial
dispossession in the Territories are like putting lipstick on a pig.
In fact, litigation has been one of the key processes through which we
have learned the intricacies of Israel's oppression of Palestinians in
the Territories. To the intelligent and skeptical observer, the Supreme
Court's abysmal record in response to this oppression has more likely
diminished its stature than enhanced it.
I believe it is vital,
therefore, for human rights activists in Israel and the Territories to
continue to challenge the Supreme Court, and to force it into the
manipulations and contortions of law that it must articulate to achieve
politically determined outcomes. That effort should not go unsupported,
though. Rather, there should be a coordinated campaign among academics
and other legal professionals outside Israel to pressure the Supreme
Court through public challenges to its rulings, shunning or confronting
its justices, providing amicus briefs or expert opinion in cases,
publishing critical law review articles and the like. This pressure
may not increase the number of just rulings but it will certainly
increase angst within the Israeli legal elite. Ultimately, it is this
awareness of contradiction that may force those within the Israeli
elite to begin a fundamental reassessment of Zionist values.
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