[News] Position Paper: Dangerous Designations, Israel’s Authoritarian Dismantling of Palestinian Civil Society, an Attack on Human Rights and the Rule of Law

Anti-Imperialist News news at freedomarchives.org
Sat Oct 30 11:31:42 EDT 2021


Position Paper: Dangerous Designations, Israel’s Authoritarian 
Dismantling of Palestinian Civil Society, an Attack on Human Rights and 
the Rule of Law
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<https://mailchi.mp/710ce07ea6a6/position-paper-dangerous-designations-israels-authoritarian-dismantling-of-palestinian-civil-society-an-attack-on-human-rights-and-the-rule-of-law-568?e=08c14cf485> 



  Position Paper: Dangerous Designations, Israel’s Authoritarian
  Dismantling of Palestinian Civil Society, an Attack on Human Rights
  and the Rule of Law

30، Oct 2021

On 30 October 2021, Al-Haq along with five organisations released the 
position paper, “Position Paper: Dangerous Designations, Israel’s 
Authoritarian Dismantling of Palestinian Civil Society, an Attack on 
Human Rights and the Rule of Law”. On 19 October 2021, the Israeli 
Minister of Defense Benny Gantz announced the designation of six leading 
Palestinian civil society organizations (CSOs) as “terror organizations” 
under Israel’s domestic Anti-Terrorism Law (2016), effectively outlawing 
the organizations and placing them at risk of imminent reprisals. The 
six targeted organizations are: Addameer Prisoner Support and Human 
Rights Association (Addameer), Al-Haq Law in the Service of Man 
(Al-Haq), Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defence for 
Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), the Union of Agricultural Work 
Committees (UAWC), and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC).

For decades, these organizations have been at the forefront of the 
Palestinian civil society and significantly contributed to the 
advancement of human rights, prisoners’ and children rights, women 
empowerment, socio-economic, agricultural and environmental development, 
in an effort to represent Palestinian voices, in Palestine and the 
world. Addameer provides legal support to Palestinian political 
prisoners, exposing human rights violations committed against them by 
Israel, the Occupying Power.[1] Al-Haq works to protect the rule of law 
and human rights, documenting human rights violations and seeking 
accountability for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against 
humanity.[2] Bisan Center defends the socio-economic, political, and 
civil rights of the poor and marginalized in the Palestinian 
society.[3] DCI-P supports the rights of Palestinian children, through 
the provision of legal services to the most vulnerable, as well as 
national and international advocacy.[4] UAWC seeks agricultural 
development through empowering Palestinian farmers within a sustainable 
community-based framework.[5] UPWC is a feminist organization aimed at 
empowering Palestinian women to build a progressive Palestinian society 
free from all forms of discrimination.[6]

Israel’s designation constitutes the latest in an escalating series of 
smear attacks and institutionalized violence against defenders of the 
Palestinian people’s human rights and fundamental freedoms that form 
part of Israel’s strategy to maintain its apartheid regime of 
institutionalized racial discrimination and domination over the 
Palestinian people as a whole, by silencing human rights defenders. The 
arbitrary designation targets six of the most eminent Palestinian CSOs 
and Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) engaged in critical human rights work 
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), placing serious obstacles 
on their documentation and monitoring of human rights violations, 
accountability work to prosecute Israel’s war crimes and crimes against 
humanity, and legal and advocacy efforts to bring Israel’s occupation, 
settler-colonialism and apartheid regime to an end.

In light of the above, the six Palestinian organisations recommend that 
the international community, UN Member States and civil society:

 1. Call on Israel, to urgently rescind the designations as acts which
    violate the freedoms of opinion and expression, and freedom of
    association, and amount to an acts of apartheid prosecutable under
    Article 7(2)(h) of the Rome Statute;
 2. Publish a bulletin to banks and financial institutions, putting them
    on notice to dismiss as inapplicable, Israel’s terrorist designation
    of the six Palestinian organizations;
 3. Communicate directly with, and recommend, that the European Union
    and Third States remove “terrorism” clauses as internal conditions
    placed on donor funding of civil society organizations in the
    occupied Palestinian territory;
 4. Call on UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of
    human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering
    terrorism, Ms. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, to examine the compatibility of
    the Anti-Terror Law, 2016 with International Human Rights Law and
    International Humanitarian Law;
 5. Denounce the application of the Anti-Terror Law, 2016 to civil
    society organizations in the OPT as an overreaching of Israel’s
    domestic law to the OPT;
 6. Call on Israel to repeal the Anti-Terror Law, 2016 effectively used
    to institutionalize the persecution of human rights defenders and
    entrench its colonial domination over the Palestinian people and
    their lands;
 7. Urge Israel to immediately cease its systematic and ongoing policies
    and practices aimed at intimidating and silencing Palestinian civil
    society and human rights defenders, in breach of their right to
    freedom of expression, including through arbitrary detention,
    torture and other ill-treatment, institutionalized hate speech and
    incitement, residency revocation, deportations, and other forms of
    coercive or punitive measures.

Please find link to position paper here 
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=fef099654b&e=08c14cf485>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] See Addameer’s website, https://www.addameer.org/ 
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=606563fc6f&e=08c14cf485>

[2] See Al-Haq’s website, https://www.alhaq.org/ 
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=c83eba2eb2&e=08c14cf485>

[3] See Bisan Center’s website, https://www.bisan.org/ 
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=69a57b7b0e&e=08c14cf485>


[4] See DCI-P’s website, https://www.dci-palestine.org/ 
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=fb87bfed42&e=08c14cf485> 


[5] See UAWC’s website, https://www.uawc-pal.org/UAWCAbout.php 
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=313f52ea5d&e=08c14cf485>

[6] See UPWC’s website, http://www.upwc.org.ps 
<https://alhaq.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=10071401ba4201bc1a4992f68&id=72f0ff4d64&e=08c14cf485>
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