The Final Statement
The seventh National Civil Peace and the Rule of Law Conference
“Towards a Civil State Where Security and Safety Prevails”
The Civil Peace Coalition held its seventh annual conference in Ramallah on Monday 19th of December with the participation of more than two hundred participants who represented more than sixty entities. This includes women and youth centres, academic institutions, grassroots organisations, governmental bodies, local and international NGOs and PLO organisations under the auspices of the Palestinian president, His Excellency Mahmoud Abbas. The day-long conference aimed to shed light on the civil peace status in Palestine with a focus on the security in Hebron district, the importance of early warning systems to bridge jurisdiction gaps and leverage the cooperation between the state bodies and the people. Additionally, the importance of contextualising the religious discourse to reflect the civic values was shown. This is done to enhance security and access to justice for all Palestinians.
The Civil Peace Coalition shared the research drafts on social media in order to allow Palestinians to reflect on them before engaging stakeholders with the research. The research was discussed in three simultaneous symposiums. Each symposium was chaired by an independent facilitator, with the participation of related senior government representatives and a commentator to reflect on a research draft in which researchers defended their respective researches.
It is worth mentioning that holding the conference comes in a long-lasting complicated situation that continues to hinder the Palestinian’s attempts for development, stability and cohesion. This includes the ongoing Occupation measures that significantly harm the Palestinian state jurisdiction and the rule of law represented in day-to-day invasions of the Palestinian areas. Cases include the demolishing of homes, murdering Palestinians, holding detentions with many other measures including the isolation of C areas and Jerusalem, as well as the siege on Gaza. These measures harm the existential value of any Palestinian authority and fundamentally jeopardises any trust between the people and the state. It also empowers and grows power relations between the people and legitimises the spreading of weapons; which contradicts the rule of law.
This conference is also coming in light of the increase of crimes in Palestine and the acceleration of the tribes’ power relations, mainly in Hebron district. This was reflected in many violent behaviours that harm the civil peace, including the mass spread of weapon and killing crimes, quarrels and shooting against the Palestinian security bodies.
All of these situations also include the growing fundamentalism and the limited jurisdictions of the state bodies with mainstreamed hate speech and incitement, the recession of the civic and democratic values of the religious discourse, mainly the informal ones. This brought the need to initiate the discussion of alternative levers of the state jurisdiction through the alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and the early warning systems in order to mainstream moderate responsive religious discourse to the people’s needs and to understand how to encounter hate and incitement speeches.
Thus, in light of the deeper discussions, the participants in the conference recommended the following recommendations to be taken into consideration pertaining to the contextualisation of the religious discourse:
1. The necessity to enhance cooperation between civil society organisations and the formal religious affairs state body organisations when encountering hate speech, incitement, stigmatisation and discriminatory discourse mainly against women, human rights activists and women organisations.
2. The importance of capacitating preachers and building and developing their civic educations.
3. The importance of modernising the religious education paths and mechanisms to include social and humanitarian sciences and civic values before the students’ engagement in their focus on their religious affairs studies.
4. The importance of encouraging multi-disciplinary research within the religious affairs colleges.
5. Developing WAQF and Religious Affairs Ministry monitoring measures on preachers and orators is important.
6. Transforming the nature of formal and informal religious education towards more inclusion and transcendental discourse.
7. The importance of including civil peace values in the preaches.
The participants also recommended the following recommendations to be taken into consideration pertaining to the security status in Hebron district:
1. The need to reform and enhance independence and strengthen the judiciary.
2. Develop deterrent penalties towards any entity, body or group of behaviours aimed to influence the work of judges or the judiciary system negatively.
3. Accelerate litigations and accelerate the cooperation between the judiciary and all stakeholders, mainly the Bar association, to speed up the adjudication of lawsuits.
4. Reform the Criminal Procedure Code to correspond to the gradual needs of the Palestinian situation.
5. Stop the security clearance as a requirement to hire judges and prosecutors, which fundamentally contradicts the principle of judiciary independence.
6. The importance of reforming the inverted pyramid in the Palestinian security bodies, where the number of officers is higher than the number of members.
7. Increase the number of police members and develop alternative and community policing mechanisms mainly in C areas, H2 of Hebron and the suburbs of Jerusalem, which do not fully fall under the Palestinian state jurisdiction due to the occupation measures.
8. Delegitimise all possession of weapons away from the direct authorisation and weapons used to harm the civil peace and create chaos in Palestine.
9. Publishing the military judiciary discourses pertaining to any disciplinary case from the security body members enhances the trust in the state bodies.
The participants also recommended the following recommendations to be taken into consideration pertaining to the early warning system as an alternative to bridge jurisdiction:
1. Establishing a national early warning body which should include state bodies representative and civil society representatives, and institutionalise this team as part of the semi-governmental bodies.
2. Developing and institutionalising the early warning index and capacitate sub-teams in different districts as early warners.
3. Developing the Palestinian national early response index
4. Developing national protection protocol for the early warners.
The member organisation of the national civil peace coalition are the Palestinian Association for Empowerment and Local Development- REFORM, the Palestinian Initiatives for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy- MIFTAH, ACT organisation for alternative disputes resolution, Human Rights and Democracy Media Center- SHAMS, Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling- WCLAC, The Palestinian Bar Association, the Executive Office of Refugees- EOR, The National Commission for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Rule of Law-Istiqlal, Damier for human rights, Taawon for Conflict Resolution, the Palestinian centre for democracy and conflict resolution, the Palestinian youth union.
