Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations

This book is the first comprehensive examination of UN efforts to protect Palestinian human rights in the territories occupied by Israel more than 50 years ago in the 1967 War. Working through the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, three top international legal experts served for six consecutive years as unpaid Special Rapporteurs with a UN mandate to report on Israeli violations of international humanitarian law and human rights standards. Being outside the discipline that controls UN bureaucrats, they enjoyed a high measure of political independence in carrying out their factfinding and reporting missions. Strikingly, despite their differences in background and political outlook, they came to a unanimous consensus confirming the routine and various Israeli violations of Palestinian basic rights. This book recounts their frustrations, their trials, their experiences, and their conclusions.

This joint effort breaks new ground in studies by the UN in several respects. It demonstrates both the positive role played by the UN in a politically controversial area and its blockage by geopolitical forces preventing it from securing the implementation of international law.

However, the intense reactions of Israel and pro-Israeli NGOs to this UN work, most notably by UN Watch, attest to the significance of a reliable accounting of Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights Their consistent evasion of the substantive charges made by careful reporting, and recourse by Israeli supporters to discrediting, defamatory attacks on the persons of these Special Rapporteurs, with charges of anti-Semitism, the core of which is subtly shifted from its proper usage as hatred of Jews to justifiable criticism of the state of Israel.

While some might argue that the UN inability to enforce international law as futile, or worse, view the UN as merely a vehicle of power politics, this book proves that international public opinion and international solidarity politics are influenced by persuasive expert findings as to international law. Such well-evidenced conclusions encourage transnational activism, as is evident from increased worldwide support for the BDS Campaign and other nonviolent external pressures.

This brilliant and authoritative account of the manner in which Israel has administered the Occupied Palestinian Territory during the past 20 years should be regarded as the definitive assessment of that situation.

Richard Falk is a leading international law professor, prominent activist, prolific author, and a pioneer thinker dedicated to peace and justice. During forty years at Princeton University Falk was active in seeking an end to the Vietnam War, a better understanding of Iran, a just solution for Israel/Palestine, and improved democracy elsewhere. He also served as UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine.

John Dugard is a South African who lives in The Hague, Netherlands. He holds law degrees from the Universities of Stellenbosch and Cambridge. In South Africa he directed the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, attached to the University of the Witwatersrand, which engaged in human rights advocacy, research and litigation during the apartheid years. More recently he has taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Leiden. He served as a member of the UN International Law Commission from 1997 to 2011, and as a judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice from 2000 to 2018.

Michael Lynk is a law professor at Western University in London, Ontario, where he teaches labour law, domestic and international human rights law and constitutional law. He has law degrees from Dalhousie University and Queen's University in Canada. He started his legal career as a labour lawyer, acting primarily for trade unions. Later, he became a labour arbitrator and mediator, and presently serves as an arbitrator for the Ontario Grievance Settlement Board. He has published extensively on Canadian labour law and human rights law.