Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
7 4 July 2017
J
UNE MARKED 50 years since the Six
Day War between Israel and the neigh-
boring states of Egypt, Jordan, and
Syria. Since then the region has been
in turmoil. The Association for Civil
Rights in Israel (ACRI) is the oldest civil society
organisations in the region. Its work is to pro-
mote human rights in both Israel and the
occupied Palestinian Territories.
Ronit Sela is the Director for The Human Rights
in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Unit with
ACRI. She was in Ireland recently on a trip spon
-
sored by Christian Aid Ireland.
When you meet Ronit the first thing you notice
is how measured and calm she is, presumably a
prerequisite for this job. When we meet she is
dealing with the loss of her phone with superhu-
man serenity. It’s no surprise to learn from her
that for a long time she thought about a career
in diplomacy.
She tells me about ACRI: “It was set up to pro
-
tect and promote Human Rights in Israel and the
Occupied Territories in 1972. We feel it’s our
mandate to protect and to promote the rights of
everyone one who is affected by the Israeli gov
-
ernment. A lot of the work we do is with Israeli
citizens, the largest group of people who are
affected by Israeli policies, but we also work
with communities who are not citizens, so in the
Occupied Territories we protect the rights of Pal-
estinians who are under military occupation”.
She’s the head of the department that deals
with the Occupied Territories and she works in
the West Bank and East Jerusalem. “We don’t
work in the Gaza strip, we only get involved with
Gaza issues when there is a war and unfortu-
nately there were three. There we look at any
action taken by the Israeli military and deter
-
mine whether it’s in breach of international law”.
East Jerusalem has been annexed and even
though ACRI’s official stance is that its occupa-
tion is illegal and Israeli law shouldn’t be applied
there, it’s a reality that has to be dealt with. She
notes that, “if people don’t have access to health
services in the region we’re going to go to the
Health Ministry and say according to Israeli law,
they should have access to these services and
we demand it. It’s the part of the occupa
-
tion that we have to play along
with”.
East Jerusalem suffers from
extreme discrimination, the
infrastructure is very poor
on every level, especially
when you compare it to
West Jerusalem, which
has become more western.
There are parks, the streets
are clean and everything is
nice. But in the East of the city,
it’s a world apart. Sela says,
“East Jerusalem is full of border
police. We always joke that they need to have
so many border police because they need to
figure out where the border is, everyone is still
looking for the border, especially in Jerusalem,
where the border is so unclear!”.
Her work in the West Bank focuses in part on
Area C – a district that’s under full military con
-
trol, where all the settlers live, with some
Palestinians who are the hardest hit: “Especially
the people who are living in places that Israel
would like to annex in the future. Israel is apply-
ing very harsh measures to limit or diminish the
Palestinian presence here and Palestinians are
not allowed to develop the land. The longest-
standing case in ACRI is 17 years. We submitted
a petition on behalf of Palestinians living in a
location that Israel strategically wants in the
south Hebron hills. People were put on trucks
and were forced to flee - they were herding com-
munities out, because Israel declared it a firing
zone for military training”. ACRI have
been petitioning on this since
2000.
“We’ve had success but
my overall sense after
having worked in ACRI for
eight years, is that for
now the door is open but
it may not be in the future.
We go to committee meet-
ings at parliament, we sit
down with their officials.
We are invited to very high-
profile meetings, we go to the
high court, but at the end of the day
none of our victories are complete”, she
declares sadly. “For 17 years people have con-
tinued to live in a firing zone under horrendous
conditions. Detention periods were shortened
but they are still too long. Our principal position
is that if there are Israelis and Palestinians living
in the same territory, they need to have the same
detention periods: you can’t have two systems!
Hardest hit are the
people who are living
in places that Israel
would like to annex in
the future
An interview with Ronit Sela, Israeli
human-rights activist in Palestine
Interview by Tess Purcell
Headbanging
in the West Bank
Ronit Sela
INTERNATIONAL
July 2017 7 5
In the West
bank and East
Jerusalem now the
door is open but it
may not be in the
future
At this point I don’t know what it feels like to be working
on something where you have clear victories. We have
moments, but in the West Bank and East Jerusalem all
our victories, all our positive verdicts and all the advo
-
cacy success is only partial. You go to sleep happy and
you wake up in the morning and there’s another thing”.
I ask her about the pressures faced by organisations
like Acri. “One of the things that has characterised the
three Netanyahu governments is that they have been
gradually cracking down on civil society and on anyone
who has been a critic of Israeli policy that relates to the
conflict, so not just what we do in the West Bank specifi
-
cally, but also on the Netanyahu approach to negotiation
or to peace deals. One of the strategic things that they
have done which I think they have succeeded in, is that
they have equated any anti-government policies in the
West Bank with being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic”.
In the case of an organisation like Christian Aid Ireland
it’s hardly surprising that it might say Israeli policies in
Area C are harming Palestinians and are in violation of
Human Rights. But, she notes, “That’s not just a criticism
of the current government; according to the Netanyahu
government that’s being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic;
and people buy it. Jewish people have endured such a
hard history of anti-Semitism that it’s easy to convince
us that things are bad. Organisations that support anti-
occupation work have been heavily targeted. The ones
at the front like ‘Breaking the Silence’ have been
assailed, individuals have been directly attacked and
there has been a lot of very negative rhetoric by mem-
bers of parliament and by ministers. ACRI in that sense,
is more in the background because we are an organisa
-
tion that deals also with Israel but also, we are vocal in
a more diplomatic way”.
How then does she deal, personally, with the central
truth that ACRI’s successes are only partial? “I grew up
outside of Tel Aviv and went to Tel Aviv University. I
hadn’t met any Arabs at all whether they were Israeli citi-
zens or other. And when I was at Uni there was a project
to bring together Jewish and Arab students, so citizens
of Israel. The idea was to have a meeting every other
week to get to know each other’s narrative and under-
stand each other and that was quite powerful for me. I
recognised that their narrative was so different and to
hear from them about their relatives in Gaza and the
West bank and to recognise the gap between how I see
the world and how they see the world. That sparked my
curiosity. When I finished school, I moved to Jerusalem
during the second intifada in 2002. Israel had started
building the separation barrier in East Jerusalem and I
just found this fascinating - it’s such a different part of
the city that had this almost Kafka situation. Half of the
city had a wall and soldiers are checking every person,
but you could just walk to another part where there’s no
wall and pass through”.
She retains a compelling optimism. “I joined ACRI 8
Years ago, and what gets me down is the situation itself.
I make a real effort to not do any work on Friday or Sat-
urday because I think after 5 days of doing the work, I
need those 48 hours of separation. Also, it helps that a
lot of people at ACRI have been here for a long time: our
legal adviser has been there for 25 years and the head
of the legal department has been there for 15. To be in
an environment with people who have fought the battle,
and get their perspective is good. I’m an optimist by
nature, I see how the world and life can be so unex
-
pected. Sometimes, you make momentous changes
without knowing it. Something that you invested 17 years
of your working life in, you might fail at and then some-
times you wake up on Tuesday morning and think ‘hey
I’ll call that person’ and suddenly problems are solved”.
She was in Dublin for Gay Pride: “We saw the Gay
Pride flags here in Dublin. A year ago, a group in Beer-
sheba wanted to have the first Pride parade. After the
organisers had interactions with the police, the local
municipality and the religious figures, they were asked
to march only on the side streets. They were asked ‘to
be considerate of other people’s feelings’! We chal-
lenged this - we took it to the high court. I was optimistic
- we’ve won such petitions before - but we lost and so
the organisers of the parade decided to cancel the
march. They said they were not going to be diverted
down back streets and instead they demonstrated out-
side city hall on that day, instead. But, in the year since
there have been ongoing conversations between the
people of Beersheba and the gay community and ACRI
was advising along the way. And, last week they marched
on the main street. There was no need for a legal petition
- instead an agreement was reached!”.
She is steely and relentless though, as well as good-
humoured. “Someone who did my job before me said
that sometimes that you bang your head on the wall and
then you wake up and you do it again and again, and
that’s what we do... professional headbanging!”.
Tess Purcell is Communications Officer, Christian Aid
Ireland, christianaid.ie, @christianaidir
Area C, the West Bank
