Trafic Statistics and Inernational Law

Last weekend a few newspapers in Israel published articles about the notorious Route 443, citing IDF sources who claim that, since the route was reopened to the use of Palestinian cars, in accordance with the Israeli Supreme Court decision, only five Palestinian cars, in average, use it each day (Haaretz in Hebrew, JPost in English). According to the item, sources in the IDF feel frustrated with the fact that 60 million NIS were invested in following the Supreme Court's ruling, mainly in fitting security measures to the mixed use of the route, and they doubt that such an expense was worth the result.
I have to say that, at first, I was pretty surprised by the fact that army officials dare challenging a Supreme Court decision, let alone for its financial cost. The item, that appeared simultaneously in too many media sources to be a reporter's initiative, suggest an IDF criticism directed at the Court for not putting the right price tag on the freedom of movement, or on the free movement itself. 
But, putting aside the troubling notion of an army that claims to know better than to Supreme Court how to balance human rights, isn't there a point to the IDF's claims about balancing expenses with results? 60 million NIS is not a small amount, and proportionality has always been a factor in international and constitutional law. Could it be that the Court really should have not issued a decision that forced the government to spend so much in order to protect so few?
I think that the answer is clearly no, for two reasons. First, the fact that only five Palestinians are using Route 443 every day is due, more than anything else, to the restrictions the IDF is imposing on them while trying to get on and off that road, in the form of checkpoints and blockades. If the IDF itself is the force that is preventing more common use of the road, it simply cannot claim that little use is why the Supreme Court's decision is flawed. Moreover, since the main legal justification of the land appropriations involved in making Route 443 into a highway in the first place was its benefit to local Palestinian population, it seems that alongside the IDF's duty to protect Israeli cars on the road it is also obligated to make it usable to Palestinian cars.
Second, not every financial consideration can be relevant when debating human rights. Although balancing expenses with results should always be a consideration in putting legal obligations on governments, it's clear that not every financial expense should influence the courts' deliberations. For instance, when a court needs to decide whether a government has a duty to provide a free service to its citizens (e.g. free education, free access to water, free health care)  it's relevant to consider how much such a service would cost to the government (and tax payers) before reaching a decision. The courts should definitely acknowledge the limited resources available for allocation by their orders, and not impose a financial obligation that they find unreasonable. But these financial, utilitarian considerations can only be taken into account when they are intrinsic to the right involved, so much that it is the actual right itself. The right to free education, for instance, is the government's duty to provide educational services free of charge. Since education costs money, the right to free education is, in fact, the government's duty to pay for its citizen's education. Whether or not such a right exists should depend, to an extent, on how much that duty would cost.
Freedom of movement, however, is different. The duty it imposes on the government is the duty to refrain from blocking a citizen or resident's movement. This duty is not expensive. The 60 million put into allowing Palestinians free travel on Route 443 did not pay for the governments efforts in refraining from blocking the road. Rather, it was put into balancing the free movement - the right that the Supreme Court found to be illegally infringed - with other important interests, such as security and protection of others (let alone illegitimate interests of Israeli settlement). In fact, rather than enabling free movement, the amounts spent by the IDF were put into security measures that restrict that right. Without even going into whether these restrictions are legitimate or not - they are clearly not intrinsic to the freedom of movement itself. The cost, then, is not the right the Supreme Court ruled on. Therefore, it cannot be a relevant consideration in deliberating the protection of the right itself.
To put it in different words, if someone in the IDF thinks that 60 million NIS is what it costs to follow the Supreme Court's decision, it is up to the IDF to reconsider the measures it decided on. deciding on human rights should be left to the court.

Fighting Occupation with Oppression?

As an Israeli who believes in the right of Palestine to self-determination and the need to end Israeli occupation - what should I think about the way Palestinians are handling human rights and that's effect on the political struggle?

First, I want to put one thing aside - many people talk about human rights (especially and their implementation in the Muslim world) and actually mean Western concepts of human rights. Some of those who protest against the Muslim practice of women veiling themselves in public often fail to see that the Western concepts of women sexuality tend to be as objectifying and may be as oppressive towards those who suffer from them.
But even being aware of my (and everyone's) tendency of conflating what I know and what is proper, there's an inherit problem with supporting a national aspiration of a social-national group that does not believe in personal freedom.

Those who are familiar with political activism in Israel-Palestine have probably heard of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. I've written a little about the legal/political situation that is the source of the legal and political disputes of ownership in that part of Jerusalem (here) but did not mention the weekly demonstrations taking place in the neighborhood. These demonstrations are organized by a joint Israeli-Palestinian private initiative, that involves left-wing Israelis (who are mostly secular Jews) and the local residents of the neighborhood (who are mainly religious Muslims). Lately, the organizers of these demonstrations have issued a request addressed at the Jewish women-protesters to show-up at the demonstrations only in clothes that would respect the local traditional population - no short trousers, no tank-tops (here, in Hebrew). Apparently, the Palestinian women who took part in the demonstrations did not feel comfortable being associated with women who are immodest according to the rules of their own culture. What's more of a problem, as it turns out, is that Muslim young men see such 'immodest' clothes as an invitation to sexual harassment of the Israeli participants in the struggle (here, in Hebrew, is an opening to the many blog entries about the subject).

By giving this example I'm trying to avoid the problem of conflating Western concepts with human rights concepts. This is not about Muslim society controlling the dress code within its borders, but a clear declaration across the board that even the women who do not adhere to Muslim values must follow Muslim modesty codes - not only when they visit East Jerusalem as tourists but when they are there on a mission of joining in with local population of fighting for what is just.
Can a women, a gay person, or any liberal person fight for a just national cause at the expense of her/his personal freedom? On one hand, those sensitive to oppression should be the first to fight it when it burdens others. On the other hand, the oppressed can be just as oppressing towards other, weaker populations. Demanding those women who do not believe in the need to cover their arms to do so when they arrive at East Jerusalem is an oppressive act merely because it enforces cultural practices on those who are not members of the relevant cultural group. It is, in a sense, a cultural occupation of the neighborhood, perhaps in response to the actual Israeli occupation. I do not claim that one is as bad as the other although, if the claim that Israeli protesters are being sexually harassed in demonstrations is true - we're getting pretty close. I'm willing to assume that not every occupation is the same and that, as some say, it is wise to finish fighting one before fighting the other. But as a supporter of liberty in all forms - what can be my excuse of ignoring one kind of oppression while I'm fighting the other?

Land, Ownership, and Luck

I think I never fully understood why land property was always dealt with differently from other kinds of property. Of course, buying houses and such is always more expensive than buying many other things, but still... to actually have a different set of laws to deal with those things?
I think that, in a way, the latest concerns about Arab and Jewish settlement and demolition plans in Jerusalem make me understand that difference a bit better.
East Jerusalem has been subject to four different legal regimes in the past century. First Ottoman, then British, later Jordanian (in 1948) and lastly Israeli (as a result of the 1967 war). In '48, the Jewish population of East Jerusalem fled to the western side of the city. In '67, the Arab population did the same, fleeing to other Arab cities in the West Bank and neighboring states. While those people could, generally speaking, take most of their belongings with them one thing always stayed behind - real estate. That's the one thing no one can carry with them. So, when everything you own usually goes with you and is subject to the same legal regime you are subject to - that's categorically not the case with the land that you own.
In the specific case of Jerusalem, both Jordan and Israel have laws that nationalize deserted land. When Jews left their land behind in 1948, Jordan nationalized them and gave them to Palestinian new residents. After the 1967 war, when Israel took over East Jerusalem it applied an exactly similar law on the property that was now deserted and, recently, gave back the property nationalized by Jordan to its original Jewish owners.
I'm sure this isn't how real estate law developed, or their historic justification. But this makes it clear to what extent owning land is different from owning other kinds of property. Ownership is a result of legal schemes. Look at the same house through the eyes of one legal system - it belongs to one person. Look at it through the eyes of another - it belongs to someone else. Unlike other movable property, the owner of land has so little control on what's happening to his or her property, cannot protect it, and cannot take it with them. Most of the time, we don't realize it. Most places are subject just to one legal regime - not only at one time but even through (at least recent) history. Only in certain cases, some unfortunate people see behind this veil of state-law connection. Some property has the bad luck of being in those place where one legal system chases another. In those cases remain the same, and so do the houses, but not the links tying them together.

On Facebook and Issues of Nationality

If you have a Facebook account (of course you do, who doesn't?) then you must know that in order to set up your account you must choose which social networks you are interested in joining. Now, the primary network anyone usually connects herself to is a regional network, and that is usually the city, the state, or the country one lives in. This has an effect on the profiles you gain access to, and those who gain access to your profile (usually, most profiles are set to allow viewing only by other people of the same network).
Interestingly, one can only be a member of one regional network at any given time. That means that I, as an Israeli student abroad, must affiliate myself either as in Israeli or as a New Yorker. For Facebook, I can't be both, but have to renounce one identity in order to adopt the other. You might say that I am an exception to the rule, and that most people live in one place, and have no need in access and affiliation with any social networks on the other side of the world. I'm sure that's less and less true with each year, but anyway, that's only half the point.

The other half is that some areas of the world simply don't follow the rule of such simple social/national connection. For example: Israel (surprise surprise). Lately, it appeared in the news that Facebook changed its regions database so that Israeli settlers in the West Bank would be able to list themselves as members of the Israeli social network, although they live outside the official borders of the state of Israel. In addition, Alquds Alarabi published a report today, stating that Syria will launch a campaign demanding a boycott of Facebook because it permits Israelis living on the Golan Heights to list themselves as Israelis (and here it is in English). And I can only guess that the same problems arise (in different magnitude, perhaps) in other areas of the world such as Tibet, Northern Ireland, or Quebec.

The thing is, that Facebook's networks are not about defining political borders and group nationalities. They are about an individual's social group - the individual who owns the account. When dealing with such an individual's nationality, applying geographical concepts starts to seem a little ridiculous. I mean, in the "real" world of facts of buildings and roads and electricity services, a city or a region can be a part of only one state, although sometimes which state that region is a part of is debatable. A person, however, can identify as belonging to more than one regional group. An ex-patriot would want to be a part of regional networks of both the the place he comes from and the place he is in now. Quite similarly, people living in places currently in political dispute would usually identify themselves one way or the other. It makes no sense to force the Golan Heights' Israeli citizens to belong to the Syrian social network, as they have nothing to look for there; their entire social connections lie within the state of Israel. At the same time, it seems important to allow the Druze population to identify as Syrian, according to their true identity, and following their actual lingual and cultural social connections.

So here's my point: in today's world social networking has less and less to do with geo-political borders. One might live on one side of the world and affiliate with a social group defined by its location on the other side. Two people living in the same region might have no social connections, identifying themselves as members of completely different (and sometimes conflicting) nationalities. This is why I find it funny that Facebook - a website that is (1) designated for social purposes and (2) has no existence outside the web - seems to cling so strongly to the "one person, one regional affiliation" conception. Seriously, don't the people in Facebook know that the internet knows no borders?

(For some more reading: the digital methods initiative)