by Rimona Afana, Human Rights and Business Associate, Africa Legal Aid
The sensitive interface between justice and reconciliation illustrates the complexity both scholars and practitioners need to come to grips with when addressing deep-rooted conflicts such as the Palestinian–Israeli one. Beyond the imperative to reach a political settlement of the dispute, which constitutes the focus of myriad studies, there is another dimension which has not received equal consideration: a secondary yet deeper layer, that of the psychological scars left behind, both at an individual and collective level. It is here that the abstruse synergy between justice and reconciliation becomes a prerequisite for comprehending and building peace. Essentially, this understanding reorients focus to the realm of values, motivations, trauma and healing experienced by those caught amid conflict and crime. Embracing the assumption that in a deep sense, peace is dependent on harmonizing reconciliation and justice, on incorporating one in the other, my hypothesis-generating study turns at the core of the conflict through a direct inquiry into the minds and hearts of Palestinians and Israelis. By connecting theoretical perspectives on reconciliation and justice to the qualitative, rich primary data collected which allows proximity to subjective realities, the paper affirms the centrality of reconciliation and justice to peace, the need for a close coupling of the two, and their inherent tensions and tradeoffs.
