Israel’s brutal, arbitrary power controlling the West Bank
I’ve been a lawyer for 26 years, in all of them I have been representing Palestinians living in the West Bank. I have never felt as helpless as I do these days.
By Michael Sfard (Israeli Human Rights Lawyer)
I want to say something about the West Bank.
Not about starvation, not about torture, not about extermination.
About simple, personal, small (relatively) evil.
I’ve been a lawyer for 26 years, in all of them I have been representing Palestinians living in the West Bank. I’ve represented individuals, families, and entire communities, and have dealt, cumulatively, with thousands of incidents in which the army, settlers, or both harmed, threatened to harm, or harassed my clients.
I have never felt as helpless as I do these days.
As law students we learn in law school about the dangers of arbitrary power — power that is unchecked, not constrained by legal norms, not subject to control by legal institutions that restrain it. When we think of this we picture distant countries and past eras. We imagine the feudal lord evicting a vassal on a whim; the king who seizes a poor man’s only lamb; the single-party official who, with a wink, has his annoying neighbor arrested. We think of places with no judiciary, certainly not one that is independent and guided by a professional ethos.
And now, in recent months in the West Bank, I stare straight into the eyes of raw, brutal, arbitrary power.
My office receives reports of arbitrary force being executed every week, every day — sometimes multiple times a day:
- Settlers invading private land, harassing the owners, scaring the children.
- Settlers uproot trees.
- A settler in military uniform searches a shepherd’s tent, breaks property, spills drinking water.
- Soldiers dismantle security cameras installed on Palestinian homes to document harassment and violence.
- Soldiers confiscate the servers where the footage is stored.
- Property is taken by police or soldiers who leave no documentation, no form confirming the seizure.
- Those who try to protest — are arrested.
- Settlers, backed by soldiers, prevent farmers from reaching their land. No reason is given.
- Police do not enforce restraining orders issued by Israeli courts against harassing settlers, do not investigate violations, do not arrest them even when threats continue.
- Police refuse to take complaints on-site or by phone — “Come to the station,” they say (and wait five hours outside in the heat).
None of this is legal.
None of this is legal.
None, none of this is legal — under the occupier’s own laws, under the military law applicable in the territory.
And none of this is new, except for the fact that now — there is no one to talk to.
There used to be a phone number, a commander, an officer, a prosecutor, a legal advisor — someone who showed a shred of shame.
Now, there is no one to talk to.
Either they don’t answer.
Or they respond with hostility.
Or they answer — and ignore.
Those who used to help, those whose job is to help, and who once understood that their mission was to enforce the law on Israeli civilians and soldiers — they disappear, change roles, retire, or fall in line with the ugly spirit of the times.
The police, the army, and the settlers have always been, to a large extent, one body — but there used to be cracks between them through which remedy could sometimes be secured, through which the Jewish supremacy monster could be restrained.
Today it is one solid mass of distilled evil.
And another client sends a WhatsApp message, and another one. And my team and I are losing our minds.
There is no one to talk to.
I find comfort only in the knowledge that the day will come when all of you, all who serve this machinery of evil — you will all have to explain to your children, to your grandchildren, and to yourselves how it was — that you failed to be human.
There will be museums that will tell your story — and the story of your victims.
Because this will not last forever.
Humanism will not lose this battle — in which I will always stand on the side of those whom you, in your minds and in your hearts, have already stripped of their humanity.
