The Law in These Parts (Shilton Ha Chok) (שלטון החוק)

Can we place the chair already?

This is the beginning of a documentary film.

It's worth taking a moment to reflect on the term "documentary film."

The common understanding is that a documentary depicts reality

unlike a narrative film which tells a fictional story.

- Like that? -Yes, let me see? Okay.

This definition may be true, but it's not precise enough.

Press "Play."

In the film, I will document a legal system.

A system which organizes the rule-of-law

in the territories we conquered in 1967.

This is a unique system. Very few people understand it in depth.

It's also worth taking a moment to reflect on the term "law."

A common definition is that the law is a collection of rules

that organize life in a particular place and define the rights and obligations

that exist between individuals, and between individuals and the authorities.

The law that organizes people's lives is entrusted to certain people.

People like the protagonists of this film. They are legal professionals.

All were members of the Israeli military legal corps.

These legal professionals, and many others, are the people who wrote,

developed and implemented the law in the occupied territories.

What's he getting over there?

Another angle.

A legal professionals work is hidden by its very nature,

it's carried out in a language most of us do not understand.

The film's protagonists' work remained

behind the scenes of familiar historical events,

and, in my opinion, never received the exposure it deserved.

Their work was never filmed,

but is documented in hundreds of thousands of pages:

military orders, legal opinions,

and court rulings that tell the story of the law.

Here is "Proclamation Number One"

declaring that the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, have entered the region,

and demanding that the law be obeyed.

When was it prepared?

This declaration was prepared in hundreds of copies,

years before the Six-Day War,

and stored in the legal advisers'

emergency cases,

without knowing if and when the IDF would even conquer territories.

The story of the law in the territories actually begins before 1967.

Years before the war, IDF legal corps officers studied international law,

the laws of war, and regulations of occupation of enemy territory.

In those years, the Military Advocate General, Meir Shamgar,

wrote the "Guide for the Military Advocate in Occupied Territory,"

a booklet containing all information a military legal professional would need,

should the IDF ever occupy territory in a neighboring country.

This here is about

the protected status of hospitals,

in the Hague Regulations, the Geneva Conventions,

Greenspan's book, the British Guide.

The emergency war gear included documents

notifying an occupied population

of the basic principles of the new law they would be subject to,

just as the Hague Regulations and Geneva Convention dictate.

lf l live in Nablus, let's say, I'm not a lawyer, just an ordinary citizen.

It's June 1967 and I find this order, which you also issued in Arabic,

stuck to the door of my shop. What am I supposed to make of it?

We're informing you that life is different now.

There's a new government in the region, run by the IDF,

and what the IDF says goes.

There is no situation of...

Chaos or absence of norms.

You'll continue to live by the norms you've lived by,

as long as there are no orders issued by the regional commander.

If the regional commander issues new orders, you must obey them.

L.D. CARD ISSUING STATION

The law, which is in the hands of people, is applied on other people.

Overnight, about a million people, residents of the occupied territories,

became subject to the new legal system.

According to international law,

an occupying army is responsible for the order and welfare

of the residents of the occupied area.

The military legal men were determined to uphold these responsibilities.

During the first year, they formulated hundreds of orders

updating the law in every instance of uncertainty or misunderstanding.

Tax liabilities, postal services, telecommunication,

motor vehicle insurance, third-party liability.

It became necessary to supervise the content of textbooks.

To determine that the Israeli Pound is legal tender,

to set the exchange rate,

to oversee and protect the property of the occupied state.

To protect archeological sites, enable freedom of worship in holy places.

We needed to formulate, print, and publish all these things,

because they were part of the machinery, the mechanism that was to move...

To bring life back to its normal course, not to let life stop.

The local residents learn the law not through reading the orders issued,

but through contact with the new authorities.

Over the course of half a century they were subject to Ottoman rule,

then British, then Jordanian or Egyptian.

Now they find themselves under the temporary rule

of the Israeli military commander.

An order issued by

the regional commander is a law!

Any resident must obey it without objection.

And if he doesn't obey?

He can be brought to trial before a military court,

or before a local court depending on the issue.

How long did the issuing of these orders go on?

It's going on to this very day.

I ask myself, why not just apply Israeli law?

Wouldn't that be easier than passing hundreds of new laws?

Why not simply apply our legal system?

If you apply Israeli law,

you imply certain things you may not want.

One of them, for instance, is that you intend to annex the region.

Secondly,

you automatically obligate yourself

to grant citizenship to the entire population.

Because if you apply the law, they become citizens...

They should become Israeli citizens.

You cannot apply law on the land and not on the people.

In the guide you wrote before the war, you called it "occupied territory."

But a few months after the war, the definition changes to "held" territory.

Why this change?

I remember talking about

"held territory" fairly early on.

Because when you say "occupied" or "occupation,"

you can give it a more subtle interpretation, for example,

"I'm occupying an apartment on Dizengoff Street."

I'm holding onto an apartment on Dizengoff Street.

Or you can say "I'm occupying territory,"

"I'm administering occupied territory."

In truth, legally speaking, it's the laws of occupied territory.

The people subject to the law will be represented in the film

by images from documentaries made over the last 40 years,

mostly by Israeli filmmakers, like me.

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan visited the beach.

He came to meet the residents of "the territories" who spend time there.

The minister spoke with the Arabs at the beach.

He asked where they're from, and what they do.

Many defendants are tried in the military courts in Gaza

and many judgments are issued every day.

In films like these, the person documenting presents facts and context.

The subject is filmed as himself.

And the viewer judges reality as it is presented.

The "Security Regulations Order" establishes military courts in the area.

The order states that the judges should be three IDF officers,

at least one of whom has studied law.

The prosecutor is anyone appointed by the military commander.

The defendant may be represented by an attorney of his choice.

The proceedings will take place in Hebrew,

but there will be a soldier present who can translate the proceedings into Arabic.

The proceedings will be transcribed.

Hundreds of thousands of court minutes are preserved in military archives.

Indictments, arguments, and judgments tell the history of the relationship

between the Palestinian residents and the law they were subject to.

I arrived in Judea and Samaria in 1967.

I was the chief prosecutor,

I appeared in courts in Nablus,

Ramallah, Tulkarem, Hebron, Jenin, Gaza...

At first they were in a state of shock.

They didn't understand what had happened.

It took them 6 to 12 months to realize things aren't so bad,

and in some respects it's better than it was before.

What kind of cases did you prosecute?

At first, mostly demonstrations. Mass protests,

derogatory chants, incitement, violence,

attempts to attack government institutions.

That was the beginning. Later, things started to get serious.

I want to talk about the precedent-setting case you mentioned in our meeting.

Case no. 4 from 1969.

The military prosecutor, you, that is,

vs. Omar Mahmoud Qassem and eight others.

The military court in Ramallah is the site for the trial of

a large band of "Fatah" members. They were captured with explosives,

intended for bombing the international airport last year.

The Israeli soldiers who testified in the trial, relayed how they were flown in by helicopter

to apprehend a group who had infiltrated the border from Jordan.

The infiltrators were armed and a firefight broke out.

Eight of the infiltrators surrendered and were captured.

As the trial began, the group's commander spoke to the court,

"I was born in Jerusalem," he says, "and left the country after the war.

"I am certain that this land is my land. "

The documents in the file reveal that Omar Qassem left the country in 1967,

in a period when many people left the area out of fear of what might come.

In Jordan, he joined The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,

and was sent, like hundreds of others, to infiltrate the occupied areas,

to attack Israeli targets and help spark an armed uprising in the region.

In court, Qassem claims that he is a soldier who fought against soldiers,

that he is not willing to stand trial as a felon.

The claim that these were POW’s was also raised in the U.N.

by Arab delegates

who claimed that some of these people are POW’s

and that Israel is violating the Geneva Conventions.

We wanted to address this issue so that this claim could not be used,

in the U.N. or by the Arab states.

After the trial, the foreign ministry translated the judgment

and distributed it to all U.N. member nations,

to prove that the issue had been addressed,

and one can analyze it, from a legal perspective,

and determine that they do not merit POW status.

The Palestinian nationals train in special military camps.

So that the entire Palestinian people can take part in the next war.

Today the differentiation between a soldier and a terrorist

is deeply rooted in our legal and political discourse.

But at the end of the 1960s

it was necessary to cement this distinction in the law.

The Omar Qassem judgment is one of the first legal texts