Moral Aspects of Prolonged Occupation: Implications for an Occupying Society

Focusing on the prolonged occupation of Israel in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the chapter discusses the moral dilemmas and the psychological and ethical challenges that prolonged occupation has for an occupying society. They argue that prolonged occupations violate universal basic moral principles on the international, societal, and individual level. Occupying societies have to socially, politically, and psychologically come to terms with their contraventions of these norms by developing societal beliefs that provide moral justifications for the occupation. In this, they are confronted with difficulties as they have to relate such pressures to their self-image as a morally just society. The development of such societal beliefs shows that even the occupying society suffers high moral and social costs. The chapter suggests that in order to terminate prolonged occupations it is pivotal to understand and erode the socio-psychological mechanisms that have developed within the institutional structure of the occupying society.