Lori Allen. The Rise and Fall of Human Rights: Cynicism and Politics in Occupied Palestine.

Abstract

Lori Allen, a cultural anthropologist, characterizes this imaginative and carefully argued book as an ethnographic study, based on her fieldwork in the West Bank, her involvement with Human Rights Organizations (HROs), and her interviews and interactions with numerous West Bank Palestinians. At the same time, the book is a work of contemporary history. It traces the emergence of Palestinian human rights from the later 1970s, inspired by the initiative of three Christian Palestinians who founded Al-Haq (The Truth) to provide proof of Israeli violations of international law and dispossession of Palestinian properties for the sake of Israeli settlement expansion. For most West Bank Palestinians, the Oslo Accords (1993, 1995) and appearance of internationally-funded HROs have led to activities focused on fundraising and reporting events and abuses according to criteria established by outsiders at the expense of working to achieve Palestinian independence and a sovereign state encompassing the West Bank and Gaza. Within this framework, the behavior of the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces has been perceived as intended more to satisfy Israeli security demands than to protect Palestinians from Israeli expansion and assaults. In Allen's words, “The human rights industry has become a kind of treadmill, spinning and rolling out projects, representational forms, funds, and jobs; but they have not ended the occupation or its abuses, instigated effective international intervention to protect basic human rights, or produced an accountable Palestinian government” (p. 15).