Statelessness and the Role of Human Rights

The Rise and Fall of Human Rights offers an extremely helpful analysis of the effects of human rights discourses and organizations that is at once unique to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and applicable to each instance where it exists "among a range of discourses and activities for stating a case, for making political claims that encapsulate ethical principles, for explaining a sense of injustice and for insisting that specific understandings of correct social relations should determine how people and governing institutions ought to interact," (9). I particularly enjoyed Allen's continued employment of Hannah Arendt's description of the stateless person, a "human being in general--without a profession, without a citizenship, without an opinion, without a deed by which to identify or specify himself--and different in general, representing nothing but his own absolutely unique individuality which, deprived of expression within and action upon a common world, loses all significance," (36). In the Palestinian case, a nation without a state, it makes sense why international human rights became the predominant discourse of establishing statehood and opposing the occupation. Accepting human rights as universal and globally recognized provides the "expression within and action upon a common world" supposedly deprived by statelessness. At it's outset, it seems like what started with Al-Haq could have turned into a strong base for either a one- or two-state solution to the conflict using human rights as a foundation. Allen shows, however, "what happens...when human rights work is disarticulated from a broader political vision and national project," namely, the production of bad faith and cynicism, use of human rights as a facade for power-seeking institutions such as the PA, and capitalistic enterprise of NGOs (69).

When we expand this discussion beyond the particularities of Palestine, however, the reasons for the fall of human rights prove to be far more pernicious than the struggles of statelessness. For starters, as Allen points out, there is "inherent impotence built into the intertwined structures of the human rights system...these structures and declarations were never intended to be enforceable. They represented the lowest common denominator of compromises among sovereign states unwilling to devolve meaningful power into the hands of others," (96). The insanely one-sided power dynamic between Palestine and Israel assures that fighting for "the lowest common denominator of compromises" is not  going to do anything to provide statehood, despite the lofty ideals of human rights. I can't seem to find the page right now, but one of Allen's interviewees pointed out that even in strong, established democratic states like the US, human rights aren't respected, as reflected by the government's constant ignorance of the will of the people (the example given being the strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq).  Compare this as well to Chaco's Social Death, and how rights-based politics can produce further oppression. Having confronted these failures of human rights, Allen looks to the resultant cynicism of the Palestinian people as a potential source of political galvanization and hope. It was extremely difficult for me to read about the internal politics of Palestine, not because they aren't relevant on their own, but because it's difficult for me to isolate them from the overall conflict. Allen talks about the positive Palestinian attitude towards the first intifada on multiple occasions; it seems to me that Palestinian cynicism as a potential political tool is most likely to be used against Israel.