The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights
£7.80
From renowned human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, an unprecedented exploration of the struggle for human rights in Israel’s courts
A farmer from a village in the occupied West Bank, cut off from his olive groves by the construction of Israel’s controversial separation wall, asked Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard to petition the courts to allow a gate to be built in the wall. While the gate would provide immediate relief for the farmer, would it not also confer legitimacy on the wall and on the court that deems it legal? The defense of human rights is often marked by such ethical dilemmas, which are especially acute in Israel, where lawyers have for decades sought redress for the abuse of Palestinian rights in the country’s High Court—that is, in the court of the abuser.
In The Wall and the Gate, Michael Sfard chronicles this struggle—a story that has never before been fully told— and in the process engages the core principles of human rights legal ethics. Sfard recounts the unfolding of key cases and issues, ranging from confiscation of land, deportations, the creation of settlements, punitive home demolitions, torture, and targeted killings—all actions considered violations of international law. In the process, he lays bare the reality of the occupation and the lives of the people who must contend with that reality. He also exposes the surreal legal structures that have been erected to put a stamp of lawfulness on an extensive program of dispossession. Finally, he weighs the success of the legal effort, reaching conclusions that are no less paradoxical than the fight itself.
Writing with emotional force, vivid storytelling, and penetrating analysis, Michael Sfard offers a radically new perspective on a much-covered conflict and a subtle, painful reckoning with the moral ambiguities inherent in the pursuit of justice. The Wall and the Gate is a signal contribution to everyone concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and human rights everywhere.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Metropolitan Books (23 Jan. 2018) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| File size | 5489 KB |
| Text-to-Speech | Enabled |
| Screen Reader | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting | Enabled |
| X-Ray | Not Enabled |
| Word Wise | Enabled |
| Sticky notes | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length | 528 pages |
by J. Baldwin
‘The Wall and the Gate’ is an amazing book, a legal tour de force. It is very well written (and translated) and is powerfully argued. Michael Sfard is one of a small number of human rights lawyers engaged in the legal struggle against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. These lawyers represent Palestinian clients in the courts, challenging systemic human rights violations – deportation, detention without trial, the use of torture to extract confessions, home demolition, assassinations, land seizures and the building of settlements and erection of barriers. In the face of hostile public opinion which is strongly reinforced by a pusillanimous judiciary, the lawyers who act in such cases need considerable courage, tenacity and resilience, the more so because the successes they achieve through litigation, whether it be in individual cases or in effecting policy change, are limited. “It is hard to imagine worse circumstances for a lawyer to argue a case,” Sfard argues on page 274 in reference to the intense conflict between the demands of national security and the upholding of human rights. He continues:
“The bullets are flying and people are being killed, while the legal suit seeks to prevent an act the military claims is essential for it to win the war. How many justices anywhere have the backbone to focus on the merits of the case and ignore the background noise?”
He even expresses unease that, in seeking legal relief for clients in the courts, he may actually do harm by lending legitimacy to the regime thereby helping to “deepen and strengthen the hold of the occupation”.
But human rights lawyers like Michael Sfard are engaged in a noble cause. The world is, without question, a better place when lawyers like him are prepared to fight for the rights of the vulnerable and the oppressed.