Law Commons^™

Transitional Justice And Post-Conflict Israel/Palestine: Assessing The Applicability Of The Truth Commission Paradigm, Ariel Meyerstein

Ariel Meyerstein, JD, PhD

This thought experiment examines whether transitional justice has a place in the Israeli-Palestinian post-conflict and, at the same time, what attempting to fit the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the transitional paradigm can teach us about the limits and possibilities of the transitional justice paradigm. In particular, the Israeli-Palestinian context presents challenging issues regarding the large beneficiary and collaborator classes in both societies. The article concludes by observing that history has proven truth commissions not to be panaceas, but that they offer a limited, inherent “procedural value” to post-conflict societies by instantiating new political dynamics between former political enemies.