A GLOBAL HISTORY OF THE FIRST PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION LYNN WELCHMAN Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org NEW DIRECTIONS IN PALESTINIAN STUDIES Series Editorial Committee Beshara Doumani, Series Editor Samera Esmeir Rema Hammami Rashid Khalidi Sherene Seikaly The New Directions in Palestinian Studies series publishes books that put Palestinians at the center of research projects and that make an innovative contribution to decolonizing and globalizing knowledge production about the Palestinian condition. 1. Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile , Loren D. Lybarger 2. Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization , Lynn Welchman. Al-Haq Al-Haq A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization Lynn Welchman UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press Oakland, California © 2021 by Lynn Welchman This work is licensed under a Creative Commons [CC-BY-NC-ND] license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Suggested citation: Welchman, L. Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization . Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.102 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Welchman, Lynn, author. Title: Al-Haq: a global history of the first Palestinian human rights organization / Lynn Welchman. Description: Oakland, California: University of California Press, [2021] | Series: New directions in Palestinian studies; 2 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2020043226 | isbn 9780520379756 (paperback) | isbn 9780520976900 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Law in the Service of Man (Organization: Rām Allāh)—History. | Human rights—Palestine—History. | Human rights—West Bank—History. | Human rights—Gaza Strip—History. Classification: LCC KMK2095.W35 2021 | DDC 342.5694/2085—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043226 Manufactured in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Al-Haq C ontents Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Writing al-Haq 1 Scholarship: Al-Haq and Human Rights 4 Framing the Work 6 Al-Haq Contributions 8 1. Context 13 The Occupied Territories, Israel, and the PLO 13 West Bank Legal Profession 16 Camp David 18 Human Rights Organizations 20 International Law 23 Human Rights in the Region 25 2. Beginnings 28 3. Founders 47 Raja Shehadeh 47 Jonathan Kuttab 59 Charles Shammas 66 LSM Steering Committee 72 viii Contents 4. Organization 73 Who Are We? in 1983 74 The Politics of LSM 79 Participation, Voluntarism, and Wednesday Evening Meetings 90 Members and Staffers 98 Into the Intifada: Twenty Years of Occupation 101 5. Interventions and Allies 108 Interventions 109 Allies 121 The ICRC 131 The Enforcement Project 135 6. Field and Legal Research 147 Fieldwork Methodology 147 The Risks of Fieldwork 152 Intifada Expansion 155 From Affidavits to Publications and Campaigns 156 Affidavits and the Palestinian Audience 159 Fieldwork and the Database 160 Publishing on Prisons 161 Structural Work 165 Legal Advice and Know Your Rights 170 Invoking the Law 178 7. Fallouts 183 Epilogue 211 Notes 229 Bibliography 283 Index 301 ix Foreword In a 1995 interview, the iconic Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said: “Pales- tinian poetry has, for little less than a decade, become conscious of the necessity of humanizing its themes and passing from Palestine as a topic or an object, to Palestinian as subject.” This ontological shift in poetry also holds true, I believe, for shifts in the political imagination, in institution building, and in knowledge production. The establishment in 1979 of the first Palestinian human rights organi- zation, Law in the Service of Man (later known as al-Haq), is a prime example. The change in focus from Palestine to Palestinian is evident in the name itself. “Man” (writ large, but male nonormative, nonetheless) became the subject on three lev- els: the individual, the collective (Palestinians as a political community), and the human (universal citizen with inalienable rights). Al-Haq’s founders dared to reimagine politics by initially taking a “nonpoliti- cal” stance in defense of the “rule of law.” This, in itself, is not highly unusual, until one is reminded that they did so in the context of a dominant nationalist politi- cal culture that saw itself as leading the struggle against a settler colonial project which steals Palestinian land and builds Israeli Jewish colonies while incarcerating Palestinians and brutally repressing them. As the first Palestinian organization of its kind and one of the earliest in the Middle East and the world, al-Haq had an outsized influence locally, regionally, and internationally in terms of its innovative forms of self-governance and methods of data collection, seasoned by working under the very difficult long-term conditions of foreign military rule. In its reports and published self-reflections, al-Haq produced insightful forms of knowledge about the external pressures on and internal contradictions of the Palestinian condition. The rise and inevitable crises experienced by al-Haq, especially after x Foreword the 1993 Oslo Accords, have profound lessons to teach all of us about the forms of political mobilization that are opened and foreclosed by human rights frame- works, and about how the Palestinians’ experience enriches our understanding of larger global trends in struggles for justice, equality, and freedom. Scholars have recognized the importance of al-Haq, but Lynn Welchman’s intimate “insider/outsider” positionality and unparalleled access to sources and people make this book the definitive and most compelling study. Her elegant and tightly structured writing have yielded a page-turning book that humanizes, so to speak, this human rights work. Moreover, her professional expertise on law and society issues provides the analytical scaffolding that links this bottom-up view to larger international issues and debates. By looking at the world through the eyes of Palestinian legal activists, Welch- man’s book contributes to the mission of the New Directions in Palestinian Stud- ies (NDPS) book series. Among other things, the series seeks rigorous works of scholarship that center the Palestinian experience, introduce new narratives and actors, and utilize locally generated vernacular sources. NDPS values justice- centered academic works that, at the same time, do not shy away from critical analysis of internal problems. One of the important dimensions of Welchman’s book is her judicious and honest account of the conflicts –political, personal, insti- tutional, and ideological—which rocked al-Haq, especially after the tragedy of the Oslo Accords and the failures of the Palestinian Authority came into full view. In hindsight, these conflicts were inevitable considering the historical moment of al-Haq’s formation, which straddled third-worldist anticolonial worldviews con- cerned with social and economic development and a universalist liberal concep- tual vocabulary concerned with international law and human rights. Welchman’s book, therefore, offers a prehistory of human rights work that globalizes the Pal- estinian experience. In focusing on Palestinians and the discourse of human rights more than on Palestine and the discourse of national liberation, al-Haq was, in many ways, ahead of its time. It inspired the formation of dozens of similar organizations, became an incubator of legal activists, and anticipated the rise of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Palestinians are the canary in the mine for many of this world’s most pressing challenges, and Welchman’s in-depth and textured study of al-Haq is rich with insights about the possibilities and limits of making universal human rights a central arena of struggle, and a welcome inter- vention in long-running debates about the relationship between law, social move- ments, and political power. Beshara Doumani, Series Editor xi Acknowled gments I am indebted to a large number of people who helped with the initial stages, lengthy progress, and eventual completion of this book. It was a joy to be back in touch with so many friends and colleagues from al-Haq, many of whom are quoted in this book and to all of whom I owe thanks for giving me their time and insights, whether on or off the record, demonstrating just that commitment to the idea of the organization that characterized al-Haq in the period examined here. In particular, I thank Raqiya Abu Ghosh, Afaf Abu Nakhlah, Sami 'Ayad, George Giacaman, Zahi Jaradat, Mustafa Mar’i, Hanan Rabbani, Mouin Rabbani, Naser Rayyes, Mervat Rishmawi, Mona Rishmawi, Ghazi Shashtari, Randa Siniora, and Issam Younis. Special thanks to Nina Atallah, who tirelessly followed up my many inquiries at the start of the research; Nidal Taha for providing copies of the corre- spondence between al-Haq’s founders and the ICJ in Geneva in the late 1970s; Raja Shehadeh for providing hard copies of his 1980 testimony (as “M”) at the UN; and Khaled Batrawi, Iyad Haddad, and Abdel Karim Kan’an, for going so many extra miles to help the research along. Fateh Azzam and Said Zeedani shared insights into some difficult days at the organization. Charles Shammas was responsible for recruiting me to LSM in 1983 (thanks, Charles!), and intense parts of my al-Haq time were shared with Mona Rishmawi, Joost Hiltermann, and Jacqueline Sha- hinian (“once an al-Haqqer, always an al-Haqqer!”). Enormous thanks of course also to Shawan Jabarin, general director of al-Haq, who invited me to write the book in the first place and then with remarkable good humor accommodated its delayed appearance; and Shawan and the al-Haq board for allowing me to draw on and quote documents from al-Haq’s archives and other internal material. Emma Playfair read every chapter as it emerged, and other al-Haq friends also read chapters and provided insightful and encouraging feedback: Charles Shammas, xii Acknowledgments Raja Shehadeh, Jonathan Kuttab, and Joanna Oyediran. Nina Dodge and Jim Fine helped with memories from the earliest days of the organization. Maggie Beirne, Margo Picken, Marc Shade-Poulson, Joyce Song, and Wilder Tayler read chapters and gave feedback and food for comparative thought. At the International Commission of Jurists, I was assisted enormously by Illaria Vena, Gerald Staberock, and Wilder Tayler, then secretary-general, who located and gave permission for me to quote documents from the ICJ archives. I am also grateful to Anne Fitzgerald of Amnesty International and Claudio Cordone, then Amnesty’s acting secretary-general, for assisting with locating documents at Amnesty, and to the organization for permission to quote said material. Iain Guest directed me to his insightful report. Other helpful readings were suggested, and encouragement provided, by friends and colleagues from the School of Law at SOAS, University of London: Samia Bano, Catriona Drew, Ron Dudai, Kate Grady, Paul O’Connell, Lutz Oette, Nimer Sultany, Iain Scobbie, and Sarah Hibbin, along with Stephen Hopgood, Adam Hanieh, and Dina Matar. Lucy King cheered me up. Abdullahi An-Na`im, Randa Alami, Laila Asser, Sara Hossain, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, and friends at EMHRF (especially Bahey el-Din Hassan and Hanny Megally) offered encouragement all the way. Charles Shammas and Susan Rockwell accom- modated me in the MATTIN space next door to al-Haq for extended research visits; and Susan and Shari Lapp, as well as Charles, hosted my husband Akram and me and, with Salwa Duaibis, Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson, shared long evenings of good food and laughter as well as reflection. Diala Shammas and Yara Hawari updated friendships with their parents forged in the 1980s at the al-Haq fortieth anniversary events in 2019, where it was also a joy to see Riziq Shuqair demonstrate the depth of his knowledge of the Palestinian human rights move- ment and the challenges facing it. I take this moment also to pay tribute to the work of Issam Younis of Al Mezan and Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and to the memory of Maha Abu Dayyeh, for many years the director of the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling. Likewise, I pay tribute to the memories of al-Haq staffers Paulein Hanna and Khamis Shalabi. Sarah Bowes good-humoredly undertook the cutting of the manuscript in an effort that went far beyond the normal limits of friendship, neatly closing the circle of her original introduction of me to Charles Shammas (and thus to LSM) in 1983. My thanks to Sarah and to Alistair Davison, James Dickins, and John Steinhardt, friends since we studied Arabic together at Cambridge and shared extracurricular times and spaces in Damascus and downtown Cairo, and who helped the finishing of this book with some Zermatt air in 2019. I am grateful to Penny Johnson for telling Beshara Doumani, lead editor of the New Directions in Palestinian Studies series, about the book project, and to Beshara for his enthusiastic response and sustained engagement; to Anthony Chase, Mouin Rabbani, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments on the text; to Niels Hooper and Robin Acknowledgments xiii Manley at the University of California Press; and to Nicholas Padfield QC, whose advice reassured me in the final stages. Two closing points here. Firstly, the usual caveat applies: I am indebted to each and every one of the friends and colleagues who helped me when I was research- ing and writing this book, but any errors in fact, interpretation, or representa- tion are of course mine. Also, while I have tried to present differing perspectives on some of the contentious issues and periods in al-Haq’s history, there may well be some who feel under-represented in the narrative that I tried to construct here, and I regret it should that be the case. This book is, in the end, an attempt at a his- tory, not the history, of al-Haq. And finally, my thanks go to Akram al-Khatib, beloved husband, who read chapters and accompanied me on research visits to his homeland Palestine, and whose depths of integrity, compassion, and insight continue to inspire. He has lived with this project since 2009 with the best of humor, and it literally could not have been completed without him. 1 Introduction W R I T I N G A L - HAQ This is a study of the origins of al-Haq, the first Palestinian human rights orga- nization, and of the wider significance of the methodologies and approaches it instigated as it developed under Israeli occupation and into the early years of the Palestinian Authority. I was invited to write about al-Haq by Shawan Jabarin, who joined as a field-worker in 1987 and became general director of the organization in 2006. I worked intermittently with al-Haq from 1983 to 1993 in different capaci- ties and, in common with many former staffers, have an enduring affection and respect for the organization and the people who worked there. For the record, I am hugely proud to have been a tiny part of it. The insider/outsider dynamics of this research affected the writing process somewhat, but I was not engaged in “partici- pant observation” at al-Haq: I was working there, and those were different times. Thus, I step into this study in the first person very sparingly. The book examines how al-Haq initiated, in areas of law and practice, lines of thinking and methodologies that were ahead of their time, and to which can be traced the origins of many foci of human rights work in Palestine and elsewhere today. It looks at the founders, the organization, its staffers (“al-Haqqers”), its work over its formative first decade, and its legacy. It considers the stresses placed on the young organization by developments under Israeli occupation including the first intifada, the Oslo process, and the arrival of the Palestinian Authority, and how such factors combined to force structural change in al-Haq in the 1990s and beyond. It is a study of some importance to the growing scholarship on the practice (and praxis) of local (as compared to international) human rights organi- zations and, incidentally, their impact on international groups. It is also a study of the origins of the Palestinian human rights movement and the increasing perme- ation of the law and rights discourse into the Palestinian public and political sphere. It is an account of Palestinian voices on their choice to work with international law 2 Introduction and human rights under occupation, despite the odds, and before human rights first became fashionable and then fell out of favor. This book examines the imme- diate times and places of al-Haq—that is, I do not present the longer history of Pal- estine or its people’s struggles to stay on their land—and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) is the main geographical focus, as it was al-Haq’s. In this study, I set the memories of those involved next to public and previ- ously unpublished documents from the time, exploring how the organization formed, applied, and explained its founding principles, methodologies, and strategies. Al-Haq has been written about by its founders, by former staffers, and more recently by external researchers. It has also written about itself fre- quently; indeed, as a young organization, it engaged in a reflective practice that sought to explain itself to its friends and allies, to the local and the international communities with which it sought to engage. I have drawn on these sources as well as on documents from al-Haq’s fading paper archives, the records of other organizations (the International Commission of Jurists [ICJ] and Amnesty Inter- national), and, from the personal archives of Nidal Taha (head of al-Haq’s Board of Trustees), correspondence spanning the years 1977–80 to and from the ICJ in Geneva and a group of correspondents in the West Bank who became founders of Law in the Service of Man (LSM), as al-Haq was first known. I have also drawn on and been guided by my meetings, discussions, and interviews with a wide range of individuals—colleagues and friends—who worked at and with LSM/al-Haq in its formative period. 1 The most prolific source of written record and reflection alike is cofounder Raja Shehadeh, several of whose publications are key to this study. His authoritative legal research and analytical works include the seminal West Bank and the Rule of Law (1980, with cofounder Jonathan Kuttab), which was al-Haq’s first publica- tion. It was critical to the fledgling organization’s profile and development and indicative of its approach. 2 At the time he was assembling the material for this work, however, Shehadeh was also keeping a journal, extracts from which (from 1979–80) were published as The Third Way in 1982. They provide a vivid contem- porary glimpse into life in the West Bank at the time when Shehadeh and friends were setting up LSM/al-Haq. Shehadeh has published three other sets of journal extracts since, 3 as well as a memoir ( Strangers in the House , 2002), on which I draw for its reflections on establishing al-Haq. The book Palestinian Walks , which won the Orwell Prize in 2008, voices other memories and musings about the organiza- tion and its work that are the more poignant for being prompted by Shehadeh’s walks in what the subtitle calls “a vanishing landscape,” in a sense the epitome of what al-Haq was established to prevent. In addition, Shehadeh’s recollections are presented in a number of journal articles and interviews. As well as reflecting the phases through which his own thinking has passed, these provide insights on the earlier times informed by perspectives developed and knowledge accrued over the decades. 4 Introduction 3 Al-Haq’s first anniversary publication, Twenty Years Defending Human Rights (1999) includes an interview with Shehadeh as well as contributions from staff- ers and former staffers talking about campaigns, events, and projects such as the 1988 International Law conference. In 2005 al-Haq published Waiting for Justice , which doubled as a substantive annual report (along the lines of those issued in the first three years of the first intifada) and as an anniversary publication ( Al-Haq: 25 Years Defending Human Rights ). The report includes a retrospective about the organization and its work by Fateh Azzam, who joined in the late 1980s and who recalls with admirable brevity not only substantive work but some impor- tant organizational moments: for example, the time when the board resigned and the organization became staff-run, and the crisis of 1997 when the board sacked all but a handful of employees and al-Haq had to more or less start again. Azzam also summarizes the “very hot debates” over the killing of collaborators in the first intifada, and armed attacks against civilian targets inside Israel in the second. 5 In 2009, a distinctive, hard-backed anniversary publication ( Al-Haq: 30 Years Defend- ing Human Rights ) includes testimonials from current and former staffers, the text of the first affidavit, a chronology of al-Haq’s early years (based on its Newsletter), photos of events and awards, a list of all publications (except the Know Your Rights series), and what tries to be an exhaustive list of everyone who ever worked at the organization. This publication was produced under the directorship of Shawan Jabarin, whose “Detention Memoirs,” smuggled out of prison and published in the organization’s third annual report, Protection Denied (1991), illustrates what an al-Haq field-worker would consider of relevance to the organization at that time. There are other documents, particularly from the 1980s, which help situate the young organization. A promotional brochure from 1983 endeavored to explain LSM’s goals and activities to the public. This was followed by the Newsletter, published bimonthly in English and Arabic from May 1984 until the end of 1987, when the first intifada made it impossible to sustain. For three-and-a-half key years, the Newsletter diligently reported on activities, interventions, and developments in the legal environment. It also took the space to reflect on the organization’s identity (hence, “Philosophy of LSM,” “The Role of a Human Rights Organiza- tion under Occupation,” and “Twenty Years of Occupation: A Time to Reflect”). 6 Some of these pieces came out of collective discussions as the organization worked through persistent challenges in the 1980s. They are indicative of a fairly consistent pattern of institutional reflection, engaging management and workers across the organization. Those involved were more or less conscious of doing something new, something extraordinary, and explained themselves accordingly. Also from the 1980s, I draw on internal documents concerned with such issues as the establish- ment of a paid position as director, orientation/reorientation sessions for staffers, the methodology behind the database, and misplaced queries and interventions from external allies in the international human rights movement in whose educa- tion al-Haq invested considerable time and energy.