Duncan Kennedy

Course Summary

This course will examine a wide variety of legal issues raised in the various stages of conflict in Israel/Palestine. These will include issues arising inside Israel proper and issues arising with respect to the Occupied Territories. For each issue, there will be some background readings and then presentation of opposing legal positions, sometimes with a U.S. case to give a comparative perspective. Issues covered will involve Israeli civil and constitutional law and international and humanitarian law; areas will include local government, land, water, education and taxation, as well as more familiar issues around the treatment of the Arab minority in Israel and legality of the occupation and its administration. Three classes will be devoted to the legal analysis of violent resistance and terrorism.

Syllabus

PART ONE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND THROUGH 1950

Class 1: Historical Background to 1948

• Historical Documents (except for “The Fourteen Points”, all are from The Israel-Arab Reader (Walter Laqueur & Barry Rubin, eds.))

1. The Fourteen Points (from Wikipedia)
2. Sykes-Picot Agreement
3. MacMahon Letter
4. Balfour Declaration
5. Emir Faisal-Chaim Weizmann Agreement
6. League of Nations Mandate for Palestine

• Aaron Wolf, Hydropolitics along the Jordan River: Scarce Water and its Impact on the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: United Nations University Press, 1995) (background summary)

Class 2: The War and the Displacement of Palestinians

• Israeli Declaration of Independence
• United Nations Resolution 194
• United Nations Resolution 303
• Israeli Law of Return
• Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine (New York: Bantam, 1973), Chapter 2 (an Israeli narrative “pre-Morris)
• Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Conclusion
• Nur Masalha, The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem (London: Pluto Press, 2003), Chapter 2 (Critique of Morris)
• Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 39-49 (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006) (Israeli victory foregone conclusion)
• Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians”, (London: Frank Cass, 1999) (critique of Schlam & Pappe)
• [OPTIONAL] Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (New York: Wiley, 2003), Chapter 12

PART TWO: INSIDE ISRAEL

Class 3: The Legalities of the Appropriation of Palestinian Land

• David Kretzmer, The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel (San Francisco: Westview, 1990), Chapter 4
• Sandy Kedar, On the Legal Geography of Ethnocratic Settler States: Notes Toward a Research Agenda, 5 Current Legal Issues 401 (2003)
• Joseph Singer, Re-reading Property, 25 New Eng. L. Rev. 711, 718-722 (1992)
• Joseph Singer, Well Settled?: The Increasing Weight of History in American Indian Land Claims, 28 Ga. L. Rev. 481, 528-532 (1994)
• Guadalupe Luna, Chicana/Chicano Land Tenure in the Agrarian Domain: On the Edge of a “Naked Knife”, 4 Mich. J. Race & Law 39, 39-50, 133-137 (1998)

Class 4: The Public Law Structure of the Israeli Polity

• Introduction: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Israel’s System of Government
• Suzie Navot, Constitutional Law of Israel (Amsterdam: Kluwer International, 2007)
• Eyal Benvenisti & Dahlia Shaham, Facially Neutral Discrimination and the Israeli Supreme Court, 36 N.Y.U.J. Int’l Law & Politics 677 (2004)

Class 5: The Place of the Arab Minority in the Israeli Polity and Economy

• Amnon Rubinstein, Israeli Arabs and Jews: Dispelling the Myths, Narrowing the Gaps (The American Jewish Committee, 1993)
• Baruch Kimmelman & Joel Migdal, The Palestinian People: A History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), Chapter 6 to p. 196
• Yehouda Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2006) (the mizrahim by a “new historian”)

Class 6: Restrictions on the Sale of Land to Arabs

• Ka’adan v. Israel Lands Authority et al. 54(1) Piskei Din 258 (1995)
• Tom Segev, A Decade of Dreams Down the Drain, Haaretz 01/10/05
• Hassan Jabareen, The Future of Arab Citizenship in Israel: Jewish-Zionist Time in a Place with No Palestinian Memory, in D. Levy & Weiss, eds., Challenging Ethnic Citizenship (NY: Bergahn Books, 2002)
• Haaretz Editorial, “A Racist Jewish State” and selected “Talkback” from readers, 7/20/07
• Arnold Hirsch, With or Without Jim Crow: Black Residential Segregation in the United States, in Arnold Hirsch & Raymond Mohl, Urban Policy in Twentieth-Century America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993)

Class 7: The Arabs in the Educational System: Districting and Funding

• Yishai Blank, Brown in Jerusalem: A Comparative Look on Race and Ethnicity in Public Schools, 38 Urban Lawyer 367 (No. 3, 2006)
• San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973)
• Edgewood Independent School District v. Kirby, 77 S.W.2d. 391 (Texas, 1989)

Class 8: “Jewish and Democratic”

• Ruth Gavison, The Jewish State: A Justification, in David Hazony et al., eds., New Essays on Zionism (New York: Shalem Press, 2006)
• Ilan Saban, Minority Rights in Deeply Divided Societies: A Framework for Analysis and the Case of the Arab-Palestinian Minority in Israel, 36 N.Y.U. J. Int’l Law & Politics 885 (2004)

PART THREE: LEGAL ISSUES ARISING FROM THE OCCUPATION OF THE WEST BANK AND GAZA

Class 9: Background up to Oslo

• Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987)
• Berry and Greg Philo, Israel and Palestine: Competing Histories (London: Pluto, 2004)

Class 10: The legality of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories

• Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of Occupation (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993) p. 7-9, 98-100, 105-106, 122-123, 140-141
• Lisa Hajjar, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (Berkeley: Univ. of Cal. Press, 2005) p. 52-58
• Eyal Benvenisti, Judicial Review of Administrative Action in the Territories Occupied in 1967, in Public Law in Israel (Conclusion) & The Elon Moreh Case [H.C. 390/79] [34(1) PD1 (1980)]
• Ronen Shamir, ” Landmark Cases” and the Reproduction of Legitimacy: The Case of Israel’s High Court of Justice, 24 Law & Soc. Rev. 781 (1990) & Bargill v. Gov’t of Israel [HCJ 4481/91] (1993)
• David Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002) p. 77-79
• [OPTIONAL] International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 9 July 2004, paras. 70-78, 86-113, 120

Class 11: The issue of the duties of the occupier with respect to social and economic development: before Oslo

• Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of Occupation (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993) p. 123-129, 141-144
• Gunnar Myrdal, “The Drift Toward Regional Inequality in a Country,” in Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (London: Duckworth, 1957)
• Meron Benvenisti, with Ziad Abu-Zayed & Danny Rubinstein, The West Bank Handbook: A Political Lexicon (Boulder: Westview, 1986) [Agriculture (Arab), Agricultural Land Use (Arab), Camp David Accords, Construction (Arab), Creeping Annexation, Economic Policy, Education (Arab), Electricity, Employment in Israel (Palestinians), Employment in Israel (Wages), Employment on the West Bank, Fiscal Burden, Foreign Aid, Foreign Trade, Health, Improvement of the Quality of Life, Industry, Interference with Private Land Ownership, Land Use, National Accounts, Parks and Nature Preserves, Physical Planning, Public Consumption and Investment, Sumud, Taxation and Revenues, UNRWA, Water]
• Guy Mundlak, Power-Breaking or Power-Entrenching Law? The Regulation of Palestinian Workers in Israel, 20 Com. Labor Law & Policy J. 569 (1999) p. 574-81

Class 12: Israel and the Palestininan Authority after Oslo: political, economic and legal developments

• Mike Berry & Greg Philo, Israel and Palestine: Competing Histories London: Pluto, 2004)
• Hiba Husseini, Challenges and Reforms in the Palestinian Authority, 26 Fordham Intl. L. J. 501 (2002-2003)
• Sara Roy, De-Development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society since Oslo, 28 J. Palestine Stud. No. 3 (Spring 1999) p. 64-82
• Leila Farsakh, Independence, Cantons or Bantustans: Whither the Palestinian State? 59 Middle East J. (No. 2, Spring 2003)

Class 13: Has Israel de facto annexed the West Bank?

• Oren Ben-Naftali, Aeya Gross & Keren Michaeli, Illegal Occupation: Framing the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 23 Berkeley J. Int. L. 551 (2005)

Class 14: The legal status of Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal

• Yuval Shany, Faraway, So Close: The Legal Status of Gaza after Israel’s Disengagement, 8 Yearbook of Int’l Humanitarian Law 369 (2005)
• Iain Scobbie, An Intimate Disengagement: Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, the Law of Occupation and of Self-Determination, Middle Eastern Law 3 (2007)
• Gisha, Disengaged Occupiers: The Legal Status of Gaza (Executive Summary, 2007)
• Human Rights Watch, Israel: Threatened Sanctions on Gaza Violate Laws of War, Sept. 20, 2007
• Ahmed v. The Primer Minister (The Gaza fuel and electricity case), HCJ 9132/07, January 27, 2008
• Abraham Bell, International Law and Gaza: The Assault on Israel’s Right of Self-Defense, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, January 28, 2008
• Human Rights Watch, Joint Letter to President Bush on the Situation in Gaza, May 12, 2008

PART FOUR: THE LEGAL STATUS OF VIOLENT RESISTANCE AND REPRESSION IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Class 15: The right of resistance in international law

• Richard Baxter, The Duty of Obedience to the Belligerant Occupant 1950 Brit. Y.B. Int’l L. 235-253-59
• Karma Nabulsi, Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999)

Class 16: Palestinian Resistance: the legality or not of violence in response to the occupation

• Richard Falk and Burns H. Weston, The Relevance of International Law to Palestinian Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: In Legal Defense of the intifada, 32 Harv. Int. L. J. 1 (1991)
• Michael Curtis, International Law and the Territories, 32 Harv. Int. J. J. 457 (1991)
• [OPTIONAL] Richard Falk and Burns Weston, The Israeli-Occupied Territories, International Law and the Boundaries of Scholarly Discourse: A Reply to Michael Curtis, 33 Harv. Int. L. J. 191 (1992)

Class 17: The targets and techniques of armed resistance: the issue of Palestinian violations of international humanitarian law

• Amnesty International, Without Distinction: Attacks on Civilians by Palestinian Armed Groups (ca. 6/22/02)
• Human Rights Watch, Letter to Ramadam Shalah of Islamic Jihad, and other statements on Palestinian suicide bombing and rocketing, 2/3/2006, 4/21/2006, 11/18/2006, 7/1/2007
• Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 2005) chs. 3 & 4
• Talal Assad, On Suicide Bombing (New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 2007) ch. 1
• David Kennedy, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (Priceton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2004) from ch. 8

Class 18: The legality or not of Israeli responses to Palestinian resistance: torture, targeter assassination, human shields

• Adam Roberts, Prolonged Military Occupation: The Israeli-Occupied Territories since 1967, 84 Am. J. Int. L. 44 (1990)
• Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Answers to Frequently Asked Questions: Palestinian Violence and Terrorism, 5 August 2002, website
• Lisa Hajjar, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (Berkeley: Univ. of Cal. Press, 2005)
• The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel vs Government of Israel, H.C. 5100/94
• Aryeh Dayan, A Wolf in Legal Clothing? Ha’aretz, 15 May 2002
• Hala Khoury-Bisharat, Israel and the Culture of Impunity, Adalah’s Newsletter, Vol. 37, June 2007

Class 19: The Wall of Separation

• Beit Sourik Village vs Government of Israel, H.C. 2056/04
• Ruth Wedgwood, The ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Israeli Security Fence and the Limits of Self-Defense, 99 Am. J. Int. L. 52 (2005)
• Nimer Sultany, The Perfect Crime: The Supreme Court, the Occupied Territories and al-Aqsa Intifada, 3 ADALAH’S REVIEW (Law and Violence) 49-57 (2002)
• Duncan Kennedy, Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought: 1850-2000
• [OPTIONAL] John Dugard, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (New York: U.N. Human Rights Council, 29 January 2007)

PART FIVE: LEGAL DIMENSIONS OF DEAL BREAKING ISSUES

Class 20: The Binational State Proposal

• Lama Abu-Odeh, The Case for Binationalism, The Boston Review, Dec. 2001-Jan. 2002
• Eight Responses to Abu-Odeh, The Boston Review, Dec. 2001-Jan. 2002

Class 21: The status of Jerusalem

• UN General Assembly Resolution 303: On the Internationalization of Jerusalem (1949)
• UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967)
• UN Security Council Resolution 338 (1973)
• The Likkud Party: Platform (March 1977)
• The PLO: Six-Point Program (December 4, 1977)
• U.S. Letter of Assurances to the Palestinians (October 18, 1991) [all six from The Israel-Arab Reader]
• Nathaniel Berman, “But the Alternative is Despair:” European Nationalism and the Modernist Renewal of International Law, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 1792 (1993)
• Adnan Abu-Odeh, Two Capitals in an Undivided Jerusalem, 71 Foreign Affairs 188 (1991)
• Moshe Ma’oz, The Future of Jerusalem: Israeli Perceptions, in Moshe Ma’oz & Sari Nusseibeh, Jerusalem: Points of Friction-And Beyond (The Hague: Kluwer, 2000)
• Jonathan Kuttab & Claude Klen, Aspects of Sovereignty: Introduction, in Ma’oz & Nusseibeh
• Jonathan Kuttab, Thoughts on a Medical Model, in Ma’oz & Nusseibeh

Class 22: The right of return as a legal issue

• U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948)
• Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, What is Israel’s Position on the Palestinian claim of a “right of return”? (Website, 5 August 2002)
• Sari Hanafi, Opening the Debate on the Right of Return, Middle East Report No. 222 (Spring 2007) p. 2-7
• Aron Harel, Whose Home is it? Reflections on the Palestinian’s Interest in Return, 5 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 333 (2004)
• Salim Tamari, Palestinian Refugee Property Claims: Compensation and Restitution, in Eyal Benvenisti, Chaim Gans & Sari Hanafi, eds., Israel and the Palestinian Refugees (–: Springer, 2007)

Class 23: Some Second Thoughts

• Raef Zreik, Palestine, Apartheid, and the Rights Discourse, 34 J. Pal. Stud. 68 (2004)
• Beshara Doumani, Palestine versus the Palestinians? The Iron Law and Ironies of a People Denied, 36 J. Pal. Stud. No. 4, Summer 2007, p. 49
• Ethan Bronner, Olmert Says Israel Should Pull Out of West Bank, New York Times, September 30, 2008

PART SIX: THE ROLE OF THE U.S. IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE LEGAL ISSUES

Class 24: Is there an Israel lobby?

• Michael Massing, The Storm over the Israel Lobby, New York Review of Books, June 8, 2006
• Walter Russell Mead, The New Israel and the Old: Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State, Foreign Affairs, July-August 2008
• David Rose, The Gaza Bombshell, Vanity Fair, April 2008