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Crime, Justice, And Underdevelopment: The Palestinians Under Israeli Control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Elia Zureik
Elia Zureik
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology Queen's University, Ontario
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Extract

Orthodox theories of crime in the Third World and in regions of uneven economic development offer a unilinear explanation of the relationship between economic development and increased crime rates. Simply stated, this Durkheimian position views the transition from traditional to modern society as being associated with the weakening of mechanical forms of solidarity and the emergence of secular and impersonal role structures based on a complex division of labor. Universalistic and achievement criteria replace ascriptive and particularistic values, and deviance-derived social control models based on formalized coercive sanctions substitute for traditional and community-based forms of control. Anomic behavior, frustration of expectations, and norm violation are considered an expected, if transitory, outcome of social change, and are explained on the basis of a clash between modern and traditional value systems.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 1988 , pp. 411 - 442
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

Author's note: This article forms part of a larger project currently underway which deals, among other things, with perceptions and experiences of Palaestinians and Israeli Jews with the legal system in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza. The project is directed by the author and Professor Founad Moughrabi of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Tennessee. The author is grateful for the help and comments provided by Khawlah Abu-Baker, Stanley Cohen, Ezzat Fattah, Aziz Haidar, Osama Halabi, Fiona Kay, Gershon Shafir, Michael Shalev, Laureen Snider, Austin Turk, and Terrence Willett. Special thanks are due to my colleague Vincent Sacco for his comraderie and scholarly advice throughout this project. Needless to say, the author is solely responsible for any shortcomings in the study.Google Scholar

1 This position is advocated by Clinard, M. B. and Abbott, D. J., Crime in Developing Countries: A Comparative Perspective (New York, 1973);Google Scholar and more recently by Shelley, Louise I., Crime and Modernization: The Impact of Industrialization and Urbanization on Crime (Carbondale, Illinois, 1981).Google Scholar For a critical assessment of this approach, see Huggins, Martha, “Approaches to Crime and Societal Development,” Comparative Social Research, 8 (1985), 17–35;Google ScholarSumner, Colin, “Crime, Justice and Underdevelopment: Beyond Modernization Theory,” in Sumner, Colin, ed., Crime, Justice and Underdevelopment (London, 1982), pp. 1–39;Google Scholar and Greenberg, David F., “Law and Development in Light of Dependency Theory,” Research in Law and Sociology, 3 (1980), 129–59.Google Scholar

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7 A Catch-22 situation faces Israeli Arabs in dealing with the Jewish state. As the Palestinian writer Anton Shammas eloquently points out, the Palestinians are citizens of a state that belongs foremost to the Jewish people as a whole. As such Israel is not the state of its citizens in conformity with other secular definitions of the modern nation state. Thus, while the Palestinians are asked to express loyalty to the Jewish state, they do not enjoy the same status as Israeli Jews, or for that matter, that bestowed upon any Jew who decides to settle in Israel. Yet, when the Palestinians behave terms of their historical bond and affinity to the rest of the Palestinian people, as Israeli Arabs have done recently, they are singled out as disloyal citizens. See Shammas, Anton, “A Stone's Throw,” New York Review of Books, March 31, 1988, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar For a fuller treatment of what Shammas calls Kitsch-22 see his Arabesques (New York, 1988). A poignant expression of solidarity shown by Israeli Arabs toward the Palestinians in the occupied territories was reflected in a statement issued by the five Arab Knesset members in which they stated “we proclaim our full identification with the struggle of this people—our people—against the Israeli occupation and for its independence of it,”Google Scholar in Chafets, Ze'ev, “Arab Rage Inside Israel,” New York Times Magazine, 04 3, 1988, p. 26.Google Scholar

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29 Haidar, ibid., p. 26.

30 Zureik, Elia, “Palestinians under Israeli Control,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 7, 2 & 3 (1984), 115.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., p. 114.

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50 Ibid., p. 4.

51 Ibid., p. 4.

52 Ibid., p. 4.

53 Ibid., p. 4.

54 Ibid., p. 5.

55 Ibid., p. 5.

56 Ibid., p. 6.

57 Ibid., p. 7.

58 Ibid., p. 13.

59 Ibid., p. 7.

60 Ibid., p. 15–24.

61 Ibid., p. 25.

62 Cf.Butler, Samuel on the inefficacy of community-based policing, in Sense and Nonsense about Crime (California, 1985), pp. 172–74.Google Scholar

63 The Committee's Report, p. 25–33.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., p. 31.

65 Ibid., p. 33.

66 Hassin, Yael, Juvenile Delinquency in Israel [Avraunut Nua'r Bi- Yisrael], Publication No. 625, The Hanrietta Sald Institute (Jerusalem, 1986).Google Scholar

67 Hassin, “Jewish and Arab,” op. cit., p. 220.Google Scholar

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69 Ibid., p. 32.

70 Ibid., p. 32.

71 Ibid., p. 32.

72 Rosenbloom, David H., Israel's Administrative Culture, Israeli Arabs, and Arab Subjects, mimeographed (Syracuse University, 1987).Google Scholar

73 Ibid., p. 3.

74 Ibid., p. 5.

75 Ibid., p. 25–26.

76 Cf. Zureik, Elia, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in internal Colonialism (London, 1979), pp. 31–66Google ScholarKimmerling, Baruch, Zionism and Territory: The Social-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics (Berkeley, Calif., 1983), p. 10.Google Scholar

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78 Ibid., p. 28.

79 Cohen, Ben-Zion, Jewish and Arab Male Offenders.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., p. 3.

81 Ibid., p. 26.

82 Ibid., p. 27.

83 Ibid., p. 11.

84 Clinard, M. B. and Abbott, D. J., Crime in Developing Countries.Google Scholar

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86 Ibid., p. 32.

87 Ibid., p. 36.

88 Ibid., p. 73–74.

89 Ibid., p. 125.

90 Ibid., p. 125.

91 Ibid., p. 115.

92 Ibid., p. 135–36.

93 Ibid., p. 137–38.

94 Ibid., p. 138.

95 Frishtik, Mordechai, The Relative Importance of Four Alternative Models in Judging Young Adults Aged 18–21 in the israeli Courts [Hebrew], unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Tel-Aviv University, 1983.Google Scholar

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98 Ibid., p. 125.

99 “Does the Liberalism of Judge Haifetz End when the Issue Involves Arabs?” in Hadashot [Hebrew daily], 2.7.1987.Google Scholar

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101 See Klein, Claude, “But Israel is not England” [Hebrew], Politika (February 1986), 26–27Google Scholar regarding the issue of bill of rights, see Zichroni, Amnon, “Equal, Less Equal, and not Equal at all” [Hebrew], Politika (February 1986), 16–18.Google Scholar

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106 Ibid., p. 35.

107 As summarized in Zureik, E., The Palestinians in Israel, p. 162.Google Scholar

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110 Greenberg, Stanley, Race and State in Capitalist Development (New Haven, Conn., 1980).Google Scholar

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112 Cohen, Stanley, “Western Crime Models in the Third World: Benign or Malignant?” Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control, 4 (1982), 85–119.Google Scholar More recently, Professor Cohen has turned his attention to examining the situation of the Palestinians in Israel and in the occupied territories. With regard to the latter, see his “Crime Politics,” Jerusalem Post, February 16, 1988.Google Scholar

113 See note l.Google Scholar

114 lbid.

115 Burman, Sandra B. and Harrel-Bond, Barbara E.(eds.), The Imposition of Law (New York, 1979).Google Scholar