This article traces the development and transformation of the human rights movement in Israel/Palestine, focusing mainly on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza. The conflict is, at its core, a struggle over rights, pitting the prerogatives of the Israeli state against the national and human rights of the Palestinian population (i.e., to self-determination, legal protections, civil liberties). Since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, however, rights-violating practices have continued.

Lisa Hajjar is a sociologist who teaches in the Law and Society Program at the University of California-Santa Barbara and is completing a book on the Israeli military court system in the West Bank and Gaza, to be published by the University of California Press.